Instructor Humor as a Moderator of Instructors’ Inappropriate Conversations and Instructional Dissent

This study (N?=?326) was conducted to examine the associations among instructor humor, inappropriate conversations, and instructional dissent. First, results showed students are more likely to employ rhetorical dissent when they perceive their instructors as humorous in the classroom. Second, using expectancy violations theory as a guide, results also indicated that students’ perceptions of instructor-relevant humor moderated the relationships between enactment of inappropriate conversations and students’ expressive and vengeful dissent. These findings support the importance of employing relevant humor in course instruction, especially when instructors engage in inappropriate conversations in the college classroom.     

Towards a truer multicultural science education: how whiteness impacts science education

Cultural Studies of Science Education - The hope for multicultural, culturally competent, and diverse perspectives in science education falls short if theoretical considerations of whiteness are...     

Transforming Education through School-community Partnerships: Lessons from Four Rural Early Childhood Development Schools in Zimbabwe

This article presents and discusses the findings of a multi-case study that was conducted in four remote rural early childhood development (ECD) schools located in the Chiredzi district, in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. The article explored how school heads enhanced resources mobilisation in remote rural ECD schools through school-community partnerships in order to improve teaching and learning conditions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the school heads, deputy heads and teachers in charge. Document reviews and observations were also used to augment data from interviews. Invitational leadership was used as an analytic tool for the study. The findings suggest that the school heads succeeded to some degree in bringing parents and various stakeholders to the ECD schools to deal with the challenges facing them. Various strategies were used including tapping into local knowledge to ensure that parents who could afford to pay fees managed to do so.     

The personal tutor–student relationship: student expectations and experiences of personal tutoring in higher education

The personal tutor plays a key role in the student experience at university, and personal tutoring embodies the student relationship with the university, suggesting that it has the potential to provide insights beyond that specific relationship to the institution and higher education context. A focus session with first year undergraduate students explored expectations and experiences of personal tutoring from the student perspective. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore students’ lived experiences, and identified superordinate themes of expectations, experiences and relationships, with cluster themes including independence and authenticity. Developing a positive and genuine relationship with the personal tutor was found to ‘buffer’ against some of the first year challenges and contribute towards a sense of belonging. Importantly, this study provides evidence that experiencing poor personal tutoring is worse than not having a personal tutor at all, as this can lead to students experiencing strong negative emotions and re-evaluating their decision to go to university. Implications of these findings in the current higher education context of fee-paying students and competing institutional demands are discussed.     

Everyday Scientific Imagination

Science & Education - Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or...     

Views of cheating among college students and faculty

College students (N = 446) and faculty (N = 97) completed a survey examining views of cheating. Agreement was noted on most situations. When differences were noted, students tended to be stricter than faculty in their evaluations and were more likely than faculty to label a situation as cheating. Opinions and views of cheating were influenced more by behavior, whether “premeditated” or “opportunistic,” than by intention.