The promotion of physical activity is a public health priority, and school Physical Education (PE) has been highlighted as an influential setting that can engage young people in physical activity. PE has a number of aims which include striving to produce physically educated and active youth (i.e., the 'PE product'), which can be described in terms of young people who engage in recommended levels of habitual physical activity, and who have competent levels of physical activity ability, knowledge, and understanding. The overall aim of this thesis was therefore to establish how PE influences the outcomes representing the `PE product. ' Key objectives were to: a) develop and test a scale to assess students' Perceived PE Worth and Perceived PE Ability, to explore how these two constructs are related, and to investigate age and sex differences (Study 1); b) investigate which secondary school PE factors most strongly correlate with outcomes representing the 'PE product, ' (Study 2) and; c) qualitatively explore the views of PE students to help understand the development of physically educated and active young people, and clarify the results from the second study (Study 3). Study 1 developed and tested the Physical Education Predisposition Scale (PEPS). Predisposing items including perceptions of competence, self-efficacy, enjoyment and attitude in relation to PE were incorporated into the PEPS. Initially Year 8 and 9 students from four schools in the North West of England were invited to participate. Three hundred and fifteen completed PEPS were returned, students then completed the PEPS 14 days later to enable the assessment of test-retest reliability. The PEPS included 11 of the original items,six Perceived PE Worth items and five Perceived PE Ability items and demonstrated an acceptable level of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Consequently, the PEPS has potential as a concise and straightforward measurement tool for teachers and researchers to use in the PE setting. Results demonstrated that there was a strong positive association between Perceived PE Worth and Perceived PE Ability (r = 0.69). Furthermore, boys reported significantly higher values on both variables, than girls, and Year 8 students scored significantly higher than their Year 9 counterparts. Within Study 2,146 schools were initially invited to participate in the study and the Heads of each PE department were sent a PE environment audit. The response rate was 27.4%, with 17 schools demonstrating a willingness to take further part in the research. The main outcome variables from the PE environment audit were then used as the basis of school selection, with-three schools being chosen. All Year 8 and 9 students from these schools were invited to participate in the research; the response rate was 28.9% (90 boys, 209 girls). Predictor variables representing predisposing (e. g., Perceived PE Worth and PE Ability), enabling (school PE environment), and personal demographic factors (e. g., socio-economic status), as described in Welk's (1999) Youth Physical Activity Promotion Model (YPAPM) were measured. Outcome variables involved physical activity (assessed by accelerometry and the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children), knowledge and understanding of health-related exercise, and PE ability (teachers' ratings). A number of factors including, sex, year group, BMI, deprivation score, Perceived PE Ability, Perceived PE Worth, number of students on roll, and number of indoor spaces, most strongly correlated with outcomes relating to the 'PE product. ' The final study involved a sub-sample of students from Study 2. These were selected to take part in focus group interviews based on their teachers' normative ratings of their PE ability. Focus groups topics were developed based on Welk's (1999) YPAPM and results from Study 2. The detailed focus group data suggest that girls' negative perception's of PE Worth and PE Ability, learned helplessness beliefs, sex issues in PE, and perceived barriers to physical activity, may partly explain the observed sex differences in physical activity. The students highlighted numerous sources of Perceived PE Ability and PE Worth that could also potentially clarify the relationship between perceptions of competence, enjoyment and physical activity. The enhanced Health Related Exercise (HRE) messages from female PE teachers may account for girls' superior knowledge and understanding of HRE and students who perceive PE to be fun and enjoyable may be positively engaged and more motivated to learn and exert effort. Finally, both students' perceptions of progression in PE over time and PE teachers' positive feedback clarifies why teachers' rating of their students improves with increasing year group. The overall findings of this thesis suggest that PE teachers should provide students with enjoyable, successful experiences, positive feedback, choice and as much variety as is feasible. In addition, a classroom climate that fosters learning and improvement, rather than competition and winning is required. This study highlighted the need for interventions targeting girls and their perceptions of barriers to physical activity. Finally, a number of physical activity issues and themes were raised in this study, and reinforcing variables of parents, family and peers were highlighted as central to the students' physical activity interests and participation (Welk, 1999). Therefore, future work is needed to unravel the complex interrelationships of reinforcing factors on students' thoughts and feelings on school PE.

Low childhood physical activity levels, and high paediatric overweight and obesity levels, carry a considerable burden to health including cardiometabolic disease, low fitness, and reduced psychosocial well-being. Numerous school- based physical activity interventions have been conducted with varied success. This thesis therefore aimed to develop and investigate the effectiveness of the Children's Health, Activity and Nutrition: Get Educated! (CHANGE!) project, which was a school-based curriculum intervention to promote healthy lifestyles using an educational focus on physical activity and healthy eating. The purpose of the formative study (Study 1) was to elicit subjective views of children, their parents, and teachers about physical activity to inform the design of the CHANGE! intervention programme. Analyses revealed that families have a powerful and important role in promoting health-enhancing behaviours. Involvement of parents and the whole family is a strategy that could be significant to ~ncrease children's physical activity levels. There is large variation in the cut-points used to define moderate physical activity (MPA), vigorous physical activity (VPA) and sedentary time, which impacts on accurate estimation of physical activity levels. The purpose of Study 2 was to test a field-based protocol using intermittent activities representative of children's physical activity behaviours, to generate behaviourally valid, population-specific cut-points for sedentary behaviour, MPA and VPA. These cut-points were subsequently applied to CHANGE! to investigate changes in physical activity (Study 3). The CHANGE! intervention resulted in positive changes to body size and VPA outcomes after follow-up. The effects were strongest among those sociodemographic groups at greatest risk of poor health status. Further work is required to test the sustained effectiveness of this approach in the medium and long-term. Further, the development of an inexpensive and replicable field- based protocol to generate behaviourally valid and population-specific accelerometer cut-points may improve classification of physical activity levels in children, which could enhance subsequent intervention and observational studies.

The role of outdoor adventure programmes as a recognised approach for the effective treatment of psychological issues has, in recent years, reflected the growing interest in the development of adventure therapy. Although there has been an increased awareness of the possibilities of such a therapeutic approach there is limited practice, and thus very little instruction for how to implement such approaches, especially from a UK perspective. The aim of this study was to develop adventure therapy practice in the UK by specifically developing an intervention for women with eating disorders. Given that this specific approach for working with eating disorders didn't exist at the time of this study, this thesis is based on the principles of action research -a key aspect of the research process was the development of adventure therapy practice itself. Given the gender considerations of working in an outdoor adventure setting and the fact that eating disorders are largely a female phenomenon this study also took a feminist approach to ensure that disordered eating was in fact not reinforced by any adventure therapy approach developed. The thesis itself describes in detail the processes of developing the adventure therapy intervention and the associated experience of the six women who were recruited and took part in the intervention. The dilemmas and decisions made with regard to a number of issues in implementing an adventure therapy approach are examined, for example, facilitating therapeutic processes in an outdoor setting, identifying issues related to eating disorders that might arise in an outdoor adventure context, and examining feminist principles in action (e. g. reflexivity). As well as the six women's experiences of the different aspects of the adventure therapy intervention, the overall impact of the intervention for each woman is also examined. Data collected from a range of tools completed by the women, including personal information sheets, the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI), personal journals, individual interviews and a final focus group indicate changes in most, but not all of the women. The results suggests that for the women with less chronic eating disorder symptoms positive change across a range of clinical symptoms were evident, including reduced troubled eating behaviours, improved body image, and motivation for change, albeit to different degrees for each woman. And for the one woman with the most chronic symptoms, although the intervention was a positive experience there was no evidence to suggest the intervention had any sustained impact. Although, the results from this study are not representative of a large clinical population of women, there is an indication that the intervention did initiate therapeutic change for some of the women and thus suggests that adventure therapy has the potential to be an effective therapeutic treatment for eating disorders and is, therefore, worthy of further investigation. Inevitably, in continuing to develop work in this area many questions and issues are raised as result of the action research process and the thesis concludes with a consideration of some of the needs of developing future adventure therapy research and practice in the UK.

The development and maintenance of healthy physical activity behaviours from an early age is a priority for public health in the UK. Schools provide a number of different opportunities (time inside and outside of the curriculum) and resources in the form of space, equipment and staff for children to learn and develop healthy behaviours, at a time when they are most receptive to behaviour change. The overall aim of the thesis was to identify the different opportunities within the school context whereby children could be physically active and use theoretically driven, whole school interventions to optimise and subsequently increase healthful physical activity. Study 1 demonstrated that primary schools wishing to use pedometers within their curricula can be confident that the EZ-V model is sufficiently accurate to measure physical activity in the form of steps taken (r=0.897). Using the EZ-V pedometer, Study 2 demonstrated that feedback from pedometers along with information on how children can be physically active during the school day, can significantly increase children's mean daily steps-min"' compared to feedback alone or control groups over the course of a school week. Furthermore, boys were significantly more active than girls across each treatment group. Study 3 explored the affect of the primary school travel plan (TP) on the moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) of 7-11 year olds during the winter and summer season. In order to examine the impact of the TP, schools were separated into schools deemed to have an Established TP (implemented for at least 2 years) or `New' schools (i. e., had just drafted their TP and were in the first year of its implementation). Children in the New TP schools accumulated 7.24 (winter) and 24.11 (summer) more minutes of MVPA (5.2% and 15.66% respectively) throughout the day compared with those in the Established TP school children (F(1,35=) 0.955, p=0.207, d=0.33). Overall, children were more active during the summer by 7.81 minutes (F(I, 35) = 0.089, p=0.768, d=0.1). The final study examined the affect of a 12 week, multi-component, whole school intervention which aimed to increase children's school day MVPA. Following baseline physical activity measures via accelerometry, intervention components consisting of a Health Week, Playtime Pals and a Pedometer Challenge were delivered sequentially over the first 6 weeks. Subsequent accelerometer data were collected after each intervention was delivered at 2,4,6 and 12 weeks. Results showed that from baseline to follow-up, children increased their MVPA by 6.57 minutes during the school day, which according to the Q statistic was likely to be beneficial. Results from the Pedometer Challenge found that boy s' mean pedometer steps"day-' were significantly higher than girls' (F(I, 95)= 9.987, p=0.002, d=0.65) and overall, mean pedometer steps-day"' significantly increased from week one to week five (F(,, 93)= 5.845, p=0.018, d=0.24). When the lowest and highest active 50% groups were compared, children in the lowest active 50% group significantly increased their steps from week one to week five (F(l, 47)= 20.847, p=0.000, d=0.93), while the highest active 50% did not (F(1,47)= 0.000, p=0.990, d=0). Furthermore, boys in the highest active 50% group were found to accumulate significantly more steps than the girls, in the highest active 50% group (F(I, 46)= 14.701, p=0.000, d=0.81), while there was no significant difference between the boys' and girls' pedometer steps in the lowest 50% group (F(l, 46)= 0.456, p=0.503, d=0.14). The overall findings of the thesis suggest that schools can successfully optimise the different opportunities during the school day in order to increase children's physical activity, but that larger, controlled and longitudinally designed studies are needed to confirm cause and effect. Most importantly, these changes may have most impact in the least active boys and girls. Interventions such as this should therefore be targeted at the least active children to ensure that they benefit as much as possible from the opportunity to increase their daily physical activity.

As natural environments have been identified as places for mental restoration and social development there is the potential to address a number of bio-psychosocial health inequalities by encouraging urban park use. The current research explores the link between people and nature within the urban context of Liverpool across 3 phases of research. The reconnaissance phase explored health inequalities, physical activity levels and park access in Liverpool. Analysis showed that Liverpool is one of the most socially and economically deprived areas within England, with less than 70% of the survey population not meeting recommended physical activity levels. Although Liverpool has an abundance of parks and urban green spaces, the high health inequalities and lack of physical activity correlation with environment features suggests residents might not access parks and urban green spaces for health benefits. The exploratory study adopted a multi-method approach to investigate bio-psychosocial responses to urban city and park environments. Using repeated measures, 18 participants walked on a treadmill for 20 minutes whilst viewing and listening to either a Liverpool urban park or city centre scene. A two-way ANOVA was conducted to compare means between data collection time points within each condition for heart rate and blood pressure. Analysis for mean arterial pressure found a significant reduction for the park condition post physical activity [F(2,18) 6.83, p=.02] with the same effect on systolic blood . pressure [F(2, 18)=8.61, p=.OO] in comparison to the city scene. Semi-structured interviews conducted after testing found that cultural and social experiences influenced how participants interact with the urban environment. In particular, opportunities to access parks and natural environments during childhood was attributed to a lifespan connection. Participants reported psychological benefits of stress reduction and attention restoration and social benefits including providing a place for family and friend interaction in a park setting. Social barriers included fear from crime and harassment from teenagers. While the city was associated with traffic, congestion and noise that could evoke negative emotions, the history and diversity of Liverpool aroused pride and enjoyment that could also promote psychosocial benefits. The intervention study adopted ethnographic principles to explore cultural and individual beliefs of a group of eleven teenagers engaged in a park based physical activity programme. Observations during the programme indicated that the practitioner's role and skill base was paramount to park and activity engagement. Changes to participants across the programme impacted negatively on group dynamics, with external pressures from family and friends contributing to low attendance rates, poor time keeping and low concentration during activities. The social intervention highlighted the need to fully engage participants in the planning process and provide an agreed structure and policy for behaviour. The research highlighted a number of organisational, cultural and social issues that need to be tackled before benefits from green spaces can be fully realised. Overall research findings suggest that potential bio-psychosocial benefits of physical activity in parks and urban green spaces may be influenced by complex social issues surrounding values, culture and tradition. Further investigation into the interrelationships between neighbourhood residents, parks and urban green spaces, activities of users, and potential restorative effects could provide beneficial insights for policy makers and practitioners who would look to use these spaces for bio-psychosocial wellbeing.

This study addresses the history of the static holiday caravan site in Britain. Commercial holiday camps, such as Butlin’s and Warner’s, have been seen by many to be the epitome of UK post-war working-class holiday making. But despite some shared characteristics and developmental roots, it is argued that static caravan sites were and are essentially a separate phenomenon, and this study analyses how they quickly became a significant and substantial aspect of post-war domestic tourism. This study also demonstrates that unlike commercial holiday camps, they spawned organically as a result of the agency of the post-war working-class, who were empowered by a growing sense of confidence, assertion and economic security, against the vision of the state-approved holiday camp model. Arising as they did as an affordable and more individualistic alternative (despite strict planning legislation that in its formulation had no concept of their future development), it is shown that static caravan sites continued to develop (with the benefit of key legislation) in a way that was not in many respects typical of other aspects of UK domestic tourism in the second half of the twentieth century, but did reflect wider patterns of working-class consumerism. This study also argues that as a major aspect of domestic tourism, static caravan parks did not follow the well-documented pattern of decline experienced by many domestic resorts and holiday forms, but exhibited a distinct tendency to adapt and change in a way that allowed manufacturers and parks to offer an up-to-date and enticing product in times of economic growth as well as times of recession. This has resulted in the static holiday caravan park becoming a significant aspect of British domestic holiday making.

By the late-nineteenth-century, cricket had a well-established national narrative. Namely; that the game‘s broadly pre-industrial, rural, and egalitarian culture had been replaced by the 'gentlemanly‘ ethos of amateurism; a culture which encouraged cricket for its own sake and specific norms of 'moral‘ behaviour exemplified by idioms‘ such as 'it‘s not cricket‘. A century later, much of this narrative not only remained intact, it survived unchallenged. However, a regionally specific sub-narrative had emerged in relation to cricket outside of 'first-class‘ Test and County cricket. Cricket in the North was 'Working class‘, 'professional‘, 'commercialised‘, and played within highly 'competitive‘ leagues, while cricket in the South was 'middle-class‘, 'amateur‘, 'non-commercial‘, and played in non-competitive 'friendly‘ fixtures. Whereas cricket in the North has attracted a good deal of academic attention, there remains a paucity of contextualised academic research of cricket in the South. Due to assumed social and cultural similarities, the so-called 'friendly‘ cricket of the South remains subsumed within the national narrative. Whereas we now know a good deal about who played cricket, and why, in the North, we know little, if anything, of those who played cricket, why they did so, and under what circumstances, in the South. This thesis, which focuses on the County of Surrey, thus examines the social and cultural development of 'club‘ cricket in the South for the first time. In order to test the historical assumption that cricket in the South replicated the gentlemanly amateurism inherent to the game‘s national culture and historical discourse, this thesis shall not only examine the origins of these important cultural 'identities‘, but who was playing cricket, and under what social, environmental, economic, and cultural circumstances, in Surrey between 1870 and 1970. In basic terms, it will demonstrate that much of the historiography proves misleading, especially regarding the universality of non-competitive cricket. Moreover, this thesis will also establish that the introduction, implementation, and spread of non-competitive cricket was a class-specific and discriminatory ideology, which had close associations with the middle-classes‘ increasing insecurity and their migration to Surrey. The ideological basis upon which non-competitive cricket was based, was to have fundamentally negative repercussions relating to the game‘s cultural meaning and popularity, and the 're-introduction‘ of competitive league cricket to the South in 1968 may well have saved the sport from a slow and agonising extinction.

This volume comprises ninety-one contributions to the Sediment 2011 conference of the Central European section of the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM-CES) and the Geologische Vereinigung (GV) at the University of Leipzig held in June 2011. The central theme of this meeting was “Sediments: Archives of the Earth System” in order to bring together young and established researchers from all fields of soft-rock geology and beyond to shape a stimulating interdisciplinary program on the role of sediments in understanding the System Earth and the evolution of paleoenvironments and climate through time.

Protocole d'entente entre l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi / Le monde sportif comprend mal la définition et le fonctionnement de l’effondrement de performance puisque les entraîneurs et athlètes l’associent trop souvent à une contreperformance. En effet, depuis l’émergence de ce sujet en 1981 (Mesagno & Hill 2013), plusieurs concepts ont évolué et plusieurs membres de la communauté scientifique se questionnent toujours quant à la bonne définition de ce sujet. Encore aujourd’hui, la définition de l’effondrement de performance varie selon les scientifiques étudiant ce phénomène. De plus, il est désormais connu que les théories de l’attention sont les causes menant à l’effondrement de performance chez les athlètes (Hill, Hanton, Matthews, & Fleming, 2010b). L’objectif de cette étude est donc de définir l’effondrement de performance, la léthargie et la performance de pointe du point de vue des athlètes, de recenser et de différencier les pensées, les sentiments, les sensations, et les émotions ainsi que de recenser les stratégies mentales utilisées par les participants afin de contrer l’effondrement de performance. Une douzaine d’entrevues semi-structurées et une analyse inductive (Blais & Martineau, 2006) des témoignages des golfeurs ont permis de répondre à ces objectifs. La technique choisie pour l’analyse des verbatims est la triangulation multi-analyste. L’analyse des résultats permet de constater une divergence quant à la définition émise par les golfeurs en ce qui concerne l’effondrement de performance, la léthargie et la performance de pointe. De manière générale, les athlètes semblent confondre le phénomène de l’effondrement de performance avec la léthargie et une mauvaise performance normale. Ce projet de recherche est à propos, car les retombés permettront de guider les entraîneurs et les athlètes afin d’optimiser leur préparation mentale afin de contrer l’effondrement de performance et la léthargie. De plus, peu d’études ont été faites du point de vue qualitatif ainsi qu’en donnant la parole aux acteurs principaux touchés par ces phénomènes. Grâce aux résultats de cette étude, il sera possible de guider les entraîneurs et les athlètes dans le but d’optimiser leur préparation mentale afin de contrer l’effondrement de performance et la léthargie. De plus, la création des courbes de performance est un atout majeur pour ce projet car il illustre pour la première fois les différences entre l’effondrement de performance, la léthargie, la performance normale et la performance de pointe. / Sport’s world sometimes misunderstands the definition and the mechanism of choking, slumping and the flow in sport. Most of the time, coaches and athletes use these terms to talk about any inferior sport performance. Since the mid 80’s, many concepts and definitions have been developed around these two subjects and researchers are still questioning about the differences between choking and slumping in sport. Even though many models were developed to help athletes to reach their full potential, very few studies gave strategies to overcome a slump or a choke. The goals of this study are to give athletes the opportunity to talk about their feelings, sensations and thoughts when they had a choking or slumping event. In fact, the aim of this study is to know more about the knowledge of the athletes concerning their own definition of choking, slumping and the flow in sport. A qualitative/inductive methodology was used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 elite golfers in four different universities until empiric saturation was reached with the participants answers. The results will be interpreted linked with Hill’s researches (2010a; 2010b; 2013; 2013) on choking in sports and Taylor’s (1988) review on slump. Using triangulation, data will provide new concepts and definitions of choking, slumping and the flow in sport. Results show that athletes cannot give a definition of choking with the same criterions as Hill’s researches. Athletes are not able to make the difference between a choking or a slumping event, which are totally different. Also, most of athletes interviewed mentioned that they experienced anger, frustration and sadness when they had a choking event in the past. Furthermore, athletes are not able the give a clear example of a choking or slumping event, because they have difficulties analysing their own performances based on their scores or feeling during tournaments. The main result of this study is the creation of performances curves showing variations of performance (normal performance, drop, peak, slump and choking episode). This study should give tools for coaches and athletes about analyzing correctly their performances. Also, it should provide mental coaches and sport psychologists proofs that athletes can’t give a proper definition of choking and slumping in sport, which should lead to better teaching and better coaching. Finally, the creation of the performance curves is the main highlight of this project. This is the first time that normal performance, choking, slumping and peak performance are illustrated to give a better understanding to athletes and coaches.

C’est dans le but de contribuer au développement de la fonction formative de l'évaluation en éducation physique que cette étude a été entreprise. Considérant l'imprécision des objets d'études proposés dans les programmes scolaires d'éducation physique et le rôle que Jouent, dans l'évaluation des élèves, le modèle de référence des enseignants et leur connaissance intuitive, l’investigation cherche à mettre en évidence la logique à partir de laquelle des éducateurs physiques évaluent une action motrice complexe impliquant à la fois «coopération» et «opposition». Dans une optique de recherche descriptive, on a d’abord développé un cadre conceptuel relatif à l’évaluation formative d’habiletés motrices complexes et synthétisé les données théoriques susceptibles de fonder l’interprétation et l’intervention pédagogiques. Puis, on a mené une recherche empirique utilisant une technique de «manipulation systématique» afin de recueillir des données sur la façon dont des enseignants du primaire et des spécialistes en sport collectif, apprécient l’habileté des élèves dans une tâche de démarquage. Les questions de la recherche portent sur les composantes de la tâche et les critères d’évaluation objectivés par les évaluateurs ainsi que sur les indices comportementaux qui pour eux caractérisent des niveaux de l'habileté en cause. L’échantillon est constitué de 70 sujets, 62 enseignants provenant de 5 commissions scolaires du Québec et 8 spécialistes enseignant dans trois universités différentes. Une séquence filmée, com prenant 18 productions d’élèves de 5ème année (10-11 ans) réalisant une action de démarquage, leur a été présentée. Les évaluateurs devaient spontanément juger de l’habileté des enfants et justifier leur appréciation en donnant le ou les éléments significatifs. Une analyse de contenu des informations relatives aux éléments significatifs et une compilation des jugements ont permis de constituer le corpus des données. Comme traitement statistique, on a utilisé le calcul des fréquences et l’analyse des correspondances qui ont mis en évidence la diversité des points de vue quant aux jugements et aux aspects de la réalité retenus. A partir des résultats obtenus, on a formulé des hypothèses quant aux modèles de référence des évaluateurs et, comme implication didactique, une hypothèse d’un profil de performance de la tâche observée qui peut aider des enseignants à s’instrumenter pour une évaluation formative.