Compassionate Communication in the Workplace: Exploring Processes of Noticing,Connecting, and Responding

This research contributes to the growing body of literature exploring emotion and communication in the workplace by considering the workers in a variety of jobs that require “compassionate communication.” Compassion is conceptualized as one form of emotional work and is theoretically developed through a model that highlights the subprocesses of noticing, feeling, and responding. Analyses of interviews with 23 workers in a wide range of human service jobs indicated a number of complexities in the communication of compassion in the workplace. Processes of “noticing” included both noticing the need for compassion and noticing details of clients’ lives in order to communicate more successfully in compassionate ways. Processes of “connecting” included both emotional processes (empathy) and cognitive processes (perspective taking). Processes of “responding” included both nonverbal strategies, such as immediacy behaviors and environmental structuring, and verbal strategies for balancing the informational and emotional content of messages. These results are interpreted in the light of both contemporary and traditional communication theory, and practical implications are presented for human service workers and others involved in compassionate communication in the workplace.     

Challenges in Working with Portraiture

Portraiture is a method that analyzes facets of a theme through in-depth narratives. This brief essay examines the challenges the author encountered when employing this method. Specifically, these challenges include (1) introducing a method new to the communication discipline, (2) creating the portraits, and (3) finding a readership. Despite these challenges, portraiture offers valuable insight for communication research.     

Goals,obstacles, and strategies in risk communication: A problem‐solving approach to improving communication about risks

Research in the field of risk communication, the study of communication about uncertain physical hazards, has chiefly focused on enhancing understanding of risk concepts or making the development of risk management policy more democratic. For risk communication to be effective, a third focus is also necessary: risk communicators need an understanding of communication as a problem solving process. To facilitate this understanding, this paper offers a framework for analyzing risk communication situations and developing messages to use in those situations. The paper discusses four goals frequently pursued by risk communicators: creating awareness about the existence of important phenomena, enhancing understanding of complicated ideas, developing agreement about policy options, and motivating action. Obstacles to these goals and strategies for achieving them are identified in a diverse set of literatures.     

Teaching,Teamed and Married

There has been a major shift in the demographic landscape in US public schools within the last decade. The population of English learners (ELs) has increased rapidly. How to increase opportunities for them to learn is the focal point of discussion in many urban and rural schools. With this change in the cultural and linguistic landscape, content-area teachers are challenged to meet the needs of ELs due to the lack of resources in teacher professional development. Among the numerous studies of pedagogical strategies about teaching ELs, few have focused on fostering ELs’ development of speaking. In this article, we review literature through the theoretical lens of willingness to communicate (WTC). Framed by a discussion of the individual, linguistic, and contextual factors which influence WTC, five principles of promoting ELs’ WTC are suggested. We argue that the understanding of factors influencing ELs’ WTC and strategies to promote their WTC serve as crucial components of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions which effective teachers of ELs must have.     

Changes in coordination and its variability with an increase in running cadence

Alterations in joint mechanics have been associated with common overuse injuries. An increase in running cadence in healthy runners has been shown to improve several parameters that have been tied to injury, but the reorganisation of motion that produces these changes has not been examined. The purpose of this study was to determine if runners change their segment coordination and coordination variability with an acute increase in cadence. Data were collected as ten uninjured runners ran overground at their preferred cadence as well as a cadence 10% higher than preferred. Segment coordination and coordination variability were calculated for select thigh–shank and shank–foot couples and selected knee mechanics were also calculated. Paired t-tests were used to examine differences between the preferred and increased cadence conditions. With increased cadence, there was a decrease in peak knee flexion and a later occurrence of peak knee flexion and internal rotation and shank internal rotation. Segment coordination was altered with most changes occurring in mid-late stance. Coordination variability decreased with an increase in cadence across all couples and phases of gait. These results suggest examination of coordination and its variability could give insight into the risk of intervention-induced injury.     

Understanding cycle tourism experiences at the Tour Down Under

Sport tourism experiences are subjective and emotional, laden with symbolic meaning. This study explores the experiences of participants who adopted the multiple roles of both an active participant and event spectator, within the parameters of one chosen sporting event. A professional cycling race event, the Tour Down Under in South Australia was chosen for this investigation, and 20 face-to-face individual interviews were conducted with cycle tourists. The three main themes emerging from the data were the interaction of people and temporary spaces on a sport tourism ‘stage’; the co-creation of authentic personal experiences and meanings; and identity reinforcement and the development of a sense of belonging. Consequently, a model for understanding sport event tourism experiences is proposed. The findings suggest that providing tourists with authentic and memorable experiences lies at the heart of what constitutes sport tourism. Whilst the results demonstrate that cycling events provide the individual with a sense of belonging or membership to a wider social group, they also illustrate that there is a continued need for more focused and nuanced approaches towards understanding sport tourism experiences that reflect the ever-increasing diversity and complexity of the interaction between sport, events and tourism.     

Factors impacting teachers' argumentation instruction in their science classrooms

Science education research, reform documents and standards include scientific argumentation as a key learning goal for students. The role of the teacher is essential for implementing argumentation in part because their beliefs about argumentation can impact whether and how this science practice is integrated into their classroom. In this study, we surveyed 42 middle school science teachers and conducted follow-up interviews with 25 to investigate the factors that teachers believe impact their argumentation instruction. Teachers responded that their own learning goals had the greatest impact on their argumentation instruction while influences related to context, policy and assessment had the least impact. The minor influence of policy and assessment was in part because teachers saw a lack of alignment between these areas and the goals of argumentation. In addition, although teachers indicated that argumentation was an important learning goal, regardless of students' backgrounds and abilities, the teachers discussed argumentation in different ways. Consequently, it may be more important to help teachers understand what counts as argumentation, rather than provide a rationale for including argumentation in instruction. Finally, the act of trying out argumentation in their own classrooms, supported through resources such as curriculum, can increase teachers' confidence in teaching argumentation.