Ethnic minority girls are less physically active than their male and White female peers, and are particularly vulnerable to obesity and other chronic diseases associated with inactivity. Little is known about the beliefs, needs, desires, and barriers related to physical activity of East African girls. The purpose of this study was to explore East African girls' experiences with and beliefs about physical activity and their suggestions for promoting active living. An exploratory action research design was employed using semi-structured focus group interviews with East African girls (N=19) 12-18 years of age in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area. All girls were practicing Muslims. Axial open coding revealed that East African girls perceive a wide variety of physical activities to be culturally relevant. A variety of personal, social, structural, environmental, and cultural barriers were also identified, which influence East African girls' physical activity participation. While many of the barriers identified in this study are consistent with previous research, several barriers (e.g., privacy in regard to covering body and hair in front of men, lack of coaches with cultural understanding) may be unique to East African girls. Barriers and strategies derived by East African girls for increasing physical activity will be presented . [poster]

If youth are not safe, they will be out. The importance of community sport-based youth development programs in urban settings is well documented. Little is known about effectively delivering youth sport programs within violent and negative environments. This presentation describes Phase I of a community action research (Stringer, 1999, 2008) project that aimed to mobilize an urban parks and recreation center in east St. Paul to counteract various safety issues that deterred their children and youth from participating in a community . sponsored youth sport development program-the Minnesota Twins' Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program. Focus groups and interviews were used to gather program stakeholders' perspectives to determine the nature of the problem and identify specific strategies for improving the youth baseball in this high risk environment. Results of Phase I showed that an unsafe environment (i.e., gang Violence, adult violence, and unsafe fields) imposed a ripple effect on the delivery of a youth sports baseball program. Various forms of violence will negatively impact recruitment, retention, cause team restructuring, create scheduling challenges, and communication issues. The key managerial, public policy, and future research implications are provided. [poster]

The prevailing wisdom in the field of educational psychology is that learning performance largely is a function of the innate capabilities and limitations of the student. However, a compelling body of empirical evidence from differential learning research supports the conclusion that the preponderance of variability in student learning performance is attributable to the design-the ergonomics-of the learning environment. This poster will provide a conceptual interpretation and analytical summary of this evidence that, collectively, supports the following conclusions:

• Collectively, evidence from a series of differential learning studies extending over the past century indicates that it is the design of the task, not the innate capabilities of the student, that most prominently influences individual variability in learning performance.
• Key ergonomic design factors that have been shown to strongly influence learning performance include adoption of cooperative learning paradigms, emphasis on physical activity and health, teacher training and remuneration levels, macroergonomic design of the educational system, and the socioeconomic status of the student.
• Of these factors, based on standardized test performance by students in 50 Twin Cities districts, it is the socioeconomic status of the student that has the most prominent influence on student learning performance.
• Unless or until the field of educational psychology recognizes the significance of ergonomic design factors for influencing student learning performance, the prospects for dramatic improvement in the performance of educational systems in the U.S. are inherently limited. [poster]