Play Days

Who needs cooperative games? -- Games for children ages 3 through 7 -- Games for children ages 8 through 12 -- Games for preschoolers -- Remaking adult games -- Cooperative games from other cultures -- Creating your own games and evaluating your success -- A new beginning : turning ideas into positive action.

Mississippi University for Women was a pioneer in the Southeast Region as well as the State of Mississippi in encouraging, promoting, and sponsoring intercollegiate athletics for women. The programs were always of the highest quality and conducted with integrity. The students and coaches involved were dedicated and committed to their respective sport. Loss of the Physical Education Assembly Building, destroyed by a tornado in 2002, and the subsequent decision (2003) by the university to cease participation in intercollegiate athletics prompted the writing of this book. Physical resources and historical records had been destroyed. Concern that the knowledge of this program would be lost along with its signifi cance to the university alumnae, and womens sport history, challenged five retired Health and Kinesiology faculty members to write this book. They knew that their collective knowledge and experiences were invaluable in recording a century of athletic competition at the W. These women promoted the educational model of sport believing that the opportunity to participate in sports brings both value and pleasure to the quality of life.

In just a few decades, sport has undergone a radical gender transformation. However, Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner suggest that the progress toward gender equity in sports is far from complete. The continuing barriers to full and equal participation for young people, the far lower pay for most elite-level women athletes, and the continuing dearth of fair and equal media coverage all underline how much still has yet to change before we see gender equality in sports. The chapters in No Slam Dunk show that is this not simply a story of an “unfinished revolution.” Rather, they contend, it is simplistic optimism to assume that we are currently nearing the conclusion of a story of linear progress that ends with a certain future of equality and justice. This book provides important theoretical and empirical insights into the contemporary world of sports to help explain the unevenness of social change and how, despite significant progress, gender equality in sports has been “No Slam Dunk.”

Around the world, school districts and institutions are exploring ways to provide quality education to their students. With this, there is a deeper need for multiculturalism in classrooms, as many students are from varying cultures and speak different languages. Early Childhood Education From an Intercultural and Bilingual Perspective provides emerging research on the use of play, toys, and games as tools for meaningful multicultural and bilingual education. By highlighting topics such as cross-cultural psychology, classroom management, and second language acquisition, this publication explores the importance of culture in games and play. This book is an important resource for educators, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the role of intercultural education in society and modern approaches to early education.

American public universities suffered tremendous funding cuts during the 1930s, yet they were also responsible for educating increasing numbers of students. The mounting financial troubles, coupled with a perceived increase in the number of “radical” student activists, contributed to a general sense of crisis on American college campuses. University leaders used their athletic programs to combat this crisis and to preserve “traditional” American values and institutions, prescribing different models for men and women. Educators emphasized the competitive nature of men’s athletics, seeking to inculcate male college athletes (and their audiences) with individualistic, masculine values in order to reinforce the existing American political and economic systems. In stark contrast, the prevailing model of women’s college athletics taught a communal form of democracy. Strongly supported by almost all female athletic leaders, this “a girl for every game, and a game for every girl” model had replaced the more competitive model that had been popular until the 1920s. The new programs denied women individual attention and high-level competition, and they promoted the development of what was considered proper femininity. Whatever larger purposes these programs were intended to serve, they could not have survived without vocal supporters. Democratic Sports tells the important story of how men’s and women’s college athletic programs survived, and even thrived, during the most challenging decade of the twentieth century.

When declared ineligible for interschool athletics by the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IIHSAA), some athletes fight back. They file lawsuits to regain their athletic eligibility. In response to lawsuits, the IHSAA counterattacks. It resorts to numerous legal and regulatory tactics to dissuade athlete lawsuits. Athlete lawsuits helped to liberalize IHSAA rules for athletes who transferred high schools due to family illness, divorce, or economic misfortune. A female athlete’s lawsuit transformed Indiana girls’ athletics years prior to the effective date of Title IX regulations prohibiting discrimination by gender in education. In For the Good of The Game: Who Decides What’s Right?, you will learn the stories of Johnell Haas, Bill and Frank Stevenson, Bill Schumaker, Warren Sturrup, and Jasmine Watson and that 1) wisdom sometimes flows up, not down; 2) the process by which decisions are made can be as important as substance, and 3), “human nature never sleeps.”