Breaking the tyranny of office hours: Overcoming professor avoidance

ABSTRACT

Studies have found that Faculty–Student Interaction (FSI) has many positive benefits for students including academic support, professional development, mentoring, and career planning. Research-intensive universities exhibit the lowest levels of faculty–student interaction within higher education. This article utilises qualitative methods to explore faculty, student, and staff perceptions of faculty–student interactions, particularly those that take place out of the classroom, at a research-intensive public U.S. university. We identify social distance between faculty and students based on unequal status within a rigid, hierarchically-organised culture as a key barrier to FSI. We then discuss methods that some of the faculty in our study used to mitigate their social distance with students in an effort to increase FSI.     

The nexus between college choice and persistence

Initial student commitments have long been considered an influence on persistence, but the reasons why students choose to attend a college have seldom been considered as dimensions of initial commitments that could influence persistence processes and outcomes. This study used NPSAS-87 to examine the influence of finance-related reasons for choosing a college on persistence decisions. The findings include (1) finance-related choices have direct and indirect influences on whether students persist in college; and (2) market-based, monetary measures of financial aid, tuition costs, housing costs, and other living costs have a substantial direct effect on persistence.     

What really influences minority attendance? Sequential analyses of the high school and beyond sophomore cohort

While the factors that influence college minority student attendance have been the subject of recent study, there remain unresolved questions about how different factors influence college attendance decisions of applicants from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. In particular, there is ambiguity about whether blacks are more or less likely to attend than whites and what factors might improve their attendance rates. This study uses two sets of logistic regressions to identify the factors that can promote minority attendance: a set that examines attendance by all high school seniors in the high school class of 1982 and a set that examines attendance by college applicants in this class. Consistent with prior research on student access, three factors are identified that can potentially improve college attendance by minority students: (1) improved academic preparation in elementary and high school; (2) increased aspirations for higher levels of educational attainment; (3) increased levels of financial aid. Public interventions that would improve any of these factors for minority high school students are likely to improve minority participation rates.     

The Status of Career and Technical Education Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in the United States

The purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate and graduate student enrollments, course delivery modes, and curricular trends and issues of CTE programs. Based on findings from 139 program/department coordinators, results emphasized that although CTE programs within institutions of higher education have declined in number (Fletcher, Gordon, Asunda, &; Zirkle, 2015 Fletcher, E., &; Djajalaksana, Y. (2015). Instructional strategy preferences in the career and technical education classroom. Journal of Research in Business Education, 57(1), 32–56. [Google Scholar]), student enrollments within those programs have remained steady compared to prior studies (Bruening et al., 2001 Bruening, T., Scanlon, D., Hodes, C., Dhital, P., Shao, X., &; Liu, S. (2001). The status of career and technical education teacher preparation programs. (Report No. V051A990004). Minneapolis, MN: The National Research Center for Career and Technical Education. [Google Scholar]; Lynch, 1990 Lynch, R. (1990). A national database on vocational teacher education (Report No. V051A80004-89). Berkeley, CA: National Center for Research in Vocational Education. [Google Scholar]). Even so, CTE program/department administrators have articulated that declining student enrollment is a major challenge within their programs. Additionally, the development of online courses and the impact of state/national educational reform initiatives were identified as major curricular trends for CTE programs. Recommendations include the need for CTE faculty to embrace online instruction, and for programs to use broader nomenclature of CTE/Workforce Education, instead of names of more traditional subdisciplines within the field to remain more accessible and sustainable in the future. The condition of undergraduate and graduate CTE programs will likely impact the viability and sustainability of CTE teacher preparation programs, recruitment of a talented and diverse CTE teaching force, continuity of the U.S. teaching workforce, and ability of K–12 teachers to maintain high-quality CTE programs.     

The Earlier the Better? Pausing for Thought …

Is earlier intervention always superior? Using two complementary forms of meta-analysis, Gardner and colleagues find no support for the “earlier is better” hypothesis in outcomes of parenting programs for child behavior problems across the 2–11 year age range. This commentary explores possible methodological and substantive reasons for the pattern of their findings. We need additional careful analyses of this kind, assessing age variations in intervention effects across broader age ranges, and in other developmental domains, for strong tests of the “earlier is better” hypothesis. At this stage, however, Gardner et al.'s findings give us some pause for thought.     

Time for inclusion?

This article examines the constraints of modern temporality which are antithetical to the careful consideration that working with diverse learners requires for the development of inclusive, democratic education. We take up the conceptual construct of time to explore how it mediates systemic practices that impact policy positions of inclusion in initial teacher education and schooling. Our analysis demonstrates that temporality shapes the possibilities of inclusive practice within which a dominant agenda of compliance frames classroom complexities – both in schooling and higher education environments – into fragmented and preconceived responses to challenging situations. Education systems position educators in risk discourses concentrated on compliance and performance, in part through an emphasis that is placed on the diagnosis of learner differences and subsequent compartmentalised responses. Through schisms in modern time, we demonstrate the ways in which inclusion, like other educational demands, may be supported through a diffraction in time rather than subjugated to it.