Using Rhetorical/Relational Goal Theory to Examine College Students’ Impressions of Their Instructors

Guided by rhetorical/relational goal theory, the purpose of this study was to examine whether students’ impressions of their instructors’ credibility, attraction, and homophily are influenced by four specific rhetorical and relational communication behaviors that instructors use when communicating with their students in the classroom. Participants were 193 undergraduate students enrolled in a variety of introductory communication courses at a large mid-Atlantic university. Using a series of multiple regression analyses, it was found that (a) clarity emerged as the sole indicator of instructor competence, trustworthiness, and task attraction; (b) clarity and confirmation emerged as indicators of goodwill; and (c) humor and confirmation emerged as indicators of social attraction and attitude homophily.     

Transposition of Knowledge: Encountering Proportionality in an Algebra Task

This article reports on an analysis of the process in which knowledge to be taught was transposed into knowledge actually taught, concerning a task including proportional relationships in an algebra setting in a grade 6 classroom. We identified affordances and constraints of the task by describing the mathematical praxeology of the two different types of knowledge exposed, in the task as such and in the activity of the classroom. Through the teacher’s explicit process of reasoning, modeling, revising, solving, and repeatedly explaining the task, we found that the transposition of knowledge was seriously affected by the contextualization of the task. Modeling word problems about everyday situations has its limitations and can, as in this case, make the problem unsolvable unless it is accepted as a “textbook task” disguised as real but adjusted to the norms of school mathematics. Such constraints may obscure mathematical ideas afforded by the task. We conclude that learning opportunities embedded in a task do not necessarily surface when a task is treated in a classroom setting.     

Dealing with the Demands: Strategies Healthcare Communication Professionals Use to Cope with Workplace Stress

This study examines how healthcare communication professionals (HCPs) cope with workplace stress while working in an inherently stressful industry. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 HCPs (14 females, 3 males) from seven nonprofit and for-profit hospitals in the midwestern and eastern regions of the United States. Communication positions held by participants included marketing, media/community relations, public information, public relations, corporate communication, and social media. Interviews revealed HCPs use four strategies to cope with workplace stress: prioritizing, seeking colleague support, keeping perspective, and being active. HCPs primarily relied on employee-centered coping strategies, even though all sources of stress were organizationally-based (i.e., workload, lack of resources, client confidentiality). The majority of HCPs emphasized the benefits of using problem-centered (i.e., prioritizing) and emotion-centered (i.e., seeking colleague support) coping strategies. Although mentioned less often, HCPs utilized more avoidance-centered coping strategies (i.e., keeping perspective, being active). More importantly, they highlighted the benefits of using avoidance-centered strategies to help them mentally and physically disengage from workplace stress. Hospital administration should reassess if, and how, they help HCPs effectively cope with workplace stress (i.e., outlets, programs, professional development opportunities) in order to improve the well-being of HCPs and increase the likelihood of organizational success.     

Personal Cleanliness Activities in Preschool Classrooms

One hundred and twelve preschool teachers in Indiana were asked to complete a questionnaire requesting them to indicate what personal health-related activities they were incorporating into their classroom routines, why they were incorporating them, and how often such activities were done. The results of the study indicate that the most incorporated activities were hand-washing, proper ways of coughing, and discussion on germs. The least incorporated personal health-related activities were proper use of bathroom and keeping things out of the mouth. Reasons for incorporating the activities include helping to curtail the spreading of colds and germs, helping the children to develop good life skills later in life, and helping the preschoolers know about the health hazards associated with germs, among others. The study recommends the need to make Health Education a core component of preschool teachers’ training.     

The Use of Representations and Argumentative and Explanatory Situations

This paper discusses the use of non-verbal representations in a modelling-based science teaching context, in which argumentative and explanatory situations occur. More specifically, we analyse how the students and teacher use representations in their discourse in modelling activities, and we discuss the relationships between the functions of these representations and the demands of the explanatory and argumentative situations that exist in that classroom. The data were collected by video recording all the classes in which a teaching sequence about intermolecular interactions was used—a topic which the students had not previously studied. In the activities, the students had to create, express, test, and discuss models in order to understand the difference between intermolecular and interatomic interactions, as well as their influences on the properties of substances. Initially, we selected excerpts of the recorded classes in which a non-verbal representation was used. Then, we used criteria to identify the argumentative and explanatory situations (previously defined), and we created categories for the functions of the representations that were used in order to analyse all the identified situations. The analysis supports conclusions indicating the relevance of the use of non-verbal representations in the construction, use, and defence of explanations. As the defence of explanations was the main context in which argumentative situations occurred in this study, our conclusions also indicate the contribution that representations make towards changing the status of the students' explanations.     

Environmental Learning of Social Cues: Evidence From Enhanced Gaze Cueing in Deaf Children

The susceptibility to gaze cueing in deaf children aged 7–14 years old (N = 16) was tested using a nonlinguistic task. Participants performed a peripheral shape-discrimination task, whereas uninformative central gaze cues validly or invalidly cued the location of the target. To assess the role of sign language experience and bilingualism in deaf participants, three groups of age-matched hearing children were recruited: bimodal bilinguals (vocal and sign-language, N = 19), unimodal bilinguals (two vocal languages, N = 17), and monolinguals (N = 14). Although all groups showed a gaze-cueing effect and were faster to respond to validly than invalidly cued targets, this effect was twice as large in deaf participants. This result shows that atypical sensory experience can tune the saliency of a fundamental social cue.     

El desarrollo de la explicación de procesos biológicos: cómo entienden los niños la causa de una enfermedad y su curación

Resumen

Partiendo de un interés por los aspectos cognitivos de la representación infantil de la enfermedad, se examinan los tipos de explicación causal acerca del origen, evolución y curación de la enfermedad, en 100 niños entre 4 y 13 años. Se observan diferencias estadísticamente significativas en el tipo de explicación causal encontrado en los distintos grupos de edad, desde una concepción de la relación causa-efecto estática, mágica y dominada por los índices perceptivos, hasta una concepción de la misma como un proceso dinámico en el que intervienen factores externos e internos al organismo. Sólo un 50% de los sujetos mayores (11–13 años) son capaces de dar una explicación fisiológica o psicofisiológica que refleje un razonamiento formal. Se discuten las implicaciones prácticas de este tipo de estudios, tanto en el campo de la clínica como en el de la educación para la salud.