A Day With The Mountain is an inquiry that ventures into the experience of self-movement through the context of freeskiing. This inquiry focuses on both my experience with three freeskiers; Leah Evans, Josh Dueck, and Mark Abma and my personal experience with freeskiing. The intention behind this inquiry is to challenge, celebrate, and evoke the self-movement experience in order to gain understandings of something so fundamental to human development. This intention is met by asking the main research question; ‘What is the experience of self-movement?’ Self-movement was fleshed out in this inquiry within a phenomenological approach. Phenomenology aims to evoke human experience through descriptive writing, which also proved to be the main challenge of this study. Stories, poetry, and images within a narrative entitled A Day With The Mountain were used to address this challenge and to invite the reader into deeply textured experiences of self-movement. A Day With The Mountain is a day of freeskiing where accumulation, threshold, breakthrough, and release make up the rhythms of the experience; these same rhythms also serve as the chapters of this text. Woven within the evocative writing of the experience of freeskiing are theoretical insights into self-movement, movement itself, of wonder. Emerging from this inquiry are ideas and questions about self-movement and movement that challenge the ground of formal physical education. I sense a potential pedagogical approach that combines movement, self-movement, and wonder as presented in this text. The emerging pedagogical approach focuses on evoking wonder, situates movement as a realm of possibility, and self-movement as possible freedom. The margins of self-movement and movement itself remain beyond the horizon of this text, and those margins are in need of more evocative description. Continuing to inquire into self-movement may reveal new possibilities and expanded understandings of self-movement, which may have significant pedagogical potential.

Context: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has both direct and indirect effect on the growing immature brain that could lead to impaired neurodevelopmental outcome in children. The extent of the motor dysfunctions becomes a matter of concern as the children grow up to school age. Objective: Our objective was to determine the extent and severity of motor dysfunctions in HIV infected school-age children at a referral centre in Namibia. Methodology: A cross sectional prospective study of 60 HIV-infected children aged 6-12 years attending the paediatric HIV clinic in Windhoek was conducted. Severity of motor dysfunction was assessed using the Gross Motor Functional Classification System (GMFCS) and the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS), and clinical data were collected from medical records and from a care-taker questionnaire. Result: Of the 60 children enrolled in the study, 28(46.67%) were males. The mean age of the children was 9.73 years (S.D = 2.024). The median age at the time of diagnosis was 12 months, with a range of 1 to 73 and a SD of 16.11months. The median age at the time of commencement of treatment was 20.5 months (males) and 35 months (female) with a P-value of 0.0039. Over five percent (5.1%) of HIV-infected school age children had motor dysfunction scored at Level II of the GMFCS while 7% had a score of Level II on the MACS. A positive correlation existed between time of start of intervention with antiretroviral therapy (ART) and motor function outcomes (p<0.0001), the serum viral RNA load and the presence of seizures in the children (correlation coefficient = 0.31; P = 0.00327); serum viral load and developmental delays among the children (correlation coefficient= 0.4; p-value = 0.00159). The CD4 cell count and motor dysfunctions were correlated (correlation coefficient: 0.37; p-value <0.0001).The CD4 cell count at diagnosis had a significant inverse correlation to the outcome of behavioural problems in the children as well (coefficient = - 0.22; P-value = 0.004912). Conclusion: A significant proportion of school-age HIV-infected children have neurodevelopmental challenges and gross motor dysfunction in particular. A study with standardized tools to ascertain the extent of impairment in the other domains of development is needed for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of HIV infection on school-age children. / GR2018

The purpose of this study was to extend the knowledge of the relationship between movement and cognition by examining the impact of a sensory-motor program on the literacy skills of first grade learners from one elementary school in East Tennessee. Literacy skills were evaluated using five subtests of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment. A 2 x 2 x 2 mixed factorial MANOVA was used to analyze group, gender, and test time effects on multiple dependent variables. The analysis yielded a statistically significant result (p < .05) in gains for the movement group and a significant interaction between gender and group. Post hoc analysis indicated that participation in a movement program appeared to negatively impact males and positively impact females. Replication of this study with a longer duration is strongly recommended to substantiate these findings.

Two experiments are reported that assess the effect two types of training (phase and duration) have on the acquisition and transfer of timed sequential movements. The first experiment showed that phase-training (practicing segment movement time goals) facilitated phase transfer over duration-training (practicing overall movement time goals). When the kinematics of the phase transfer test were altered in the second experiment, no transfer differences were found between phase and duration-trained groups. These findings are discussed in reference to contextual interference effects and the learning of essential variables. Also, the importance of kinematics and segment relationships to essential variables are evaluated. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

Measuring range of motion (for example, of the cervical spine or shoulder) is a common feature in the diagnosis and longitudinal assessment of many medical conditions. Current clinical methods, however, cannot measure combinations of movement or velocity of movement. A new threedimensional measuring system, the FASTRAK, can measure range of motion in the primary plane of movement and also in secondary planes of movement. Further, it can measure concurrent threedimensional movement of the body elsewhere; for example, of the trunk. In order for a measured change in range of motion to be confidently perceived as real change, the measuring tool has to be shown to be reliable. This study commences by performing systematic reviews assessing the evidence for the reliability of current cervical spine and shoulder range of motion measuring tools. The reliability of the FASTRAK in measuring cervical spine and shoulder range of motion is then assessed on healthy subjects with unrestricted neck and shoulder movement. The methodology and analysis provides a framework for future reliability studies of this nature. Range of motion is often limited in subjects with diagnosed ankylosing spondylitis (AS). To assess the ability of the FASTRAK to differentiate between a non-diseased population and subjects with AS, and between different severities of AS, the FASTRAK is applied to a sample of AS subjects in a longitudinal study. Pictures of movement are built up and compared, using a novel application of repeated measures multilevel modelling, for both healthy and AS subjects. The use of multilevel modelling to build these pictures of movement is evaluated. Clinical validation of the models and the usefulness and acceptability of the FASTRAK in a clinical setting is assessed through the process of semi-structured interviews with clinicians from the disciplines most likely to make range of motion measurements in clinical practice.

This thesis is a study of the development of the European Marches Network against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Social Exclusion. It is considered as a component of an emerging international social movement that has contested the consequences of neoliberal European integration to develop the goal of a social and democratic Europe as part of a different world order. This study engages critically with the dominant sociological paradigm of social movements that renders the class politics associated with the labour movement as anachronistic. This paradigm asserts that fundamental socio-structural changes dictate that to be progressive, contemporary new social movements (NSMs) have to operate according to a new logic of collective action that is beyond class. The Network is investigated through the application of ethnographic methods that are integrated into a dialectical analysis. This methodological approach involved the author taking the role of `activist-researcher' that was consistent with his commitment to producing knowledge that was not only about progressive social change but also useful to the collective struggle to achieve it. The findings of the empirical investigation are presented under the headings of 'mobilisation', 'agenda formation' and 'organisation'. These headings represent three interconnected elements of collective action that form the totality of the Network. The Network is related to the locally and nationally based economic and social struggles through which it developed and is also located within a broader international social movement of which it was a product and producer. Various elements of the Network arising from the investigation are discussed in relation to the work of writers from the dominant paradigm. It is argued that the Network is not comprehensible as a manifestation of a postmaterial politics that is beyond class, but rather as a form of class politics in the present conjuncture of neoliberal restructuring. Therefore, it is concluded that far from indicating the terminal decline of labour as a progressive social actor, the Network suggests its renewal as a social movement.

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