Disposition versus situation: Neurocommunlcology and the influence of trait apprehension versus situational factors on state public speaking anxiety

Research indicates that individuals with elevated levels of public speaking anxiety report significantly different mental representations of the public speaking context, when compared to individuals with lower levels of anxiety. To examine the effect of the differences in mental representations, narratives for three public speaking contexts were developed. Results indicated that disposition (i.e., trait apprehension) was a better predictor of state anxiety when giving an impromptu speech. Situational factors (i.e., importance, skills, impression), however, were better predictors of state anxiety when either giving a speech to a 5^th grade class or giving a speech to friends.     

The relationship between perceived instructor communicator style,argumentativeness, and verbal aggressiveness

The purpose of this study was to examine the interrelationships among perceived instructor communicator style, perceived instructor trait argumentativeness, and perceived instructor trait verbal aggressiveness in the college classroom. Participants were 236 undergraduate students enrolled in a variety of communication courses at a large Eastern university. Results indicated that (a) perceived instructor trait argumentativeness was positively related to the perceived instructor communicator style attributes of impression leaving, contentious, open, dramatic, dominant, precise, relaxed, attentive, and animated; (b) perceived instructor trait verbal aggressiveness was positively related to the perceived instructor communicator style attributes of contentious and precise, and negatively related to the perceived communicator style attributes of impression leaving, relaxed, friendly, attentive, and animated; and (c) perceived instructor use of verbally aggressive messages was related in some way to the perceived instructor communicator style attributes of contentious, impression leaving, friendly, attentive, animated, relaxed, dramatic, and precise.     

Complexity of Secondary Scientific Data Sources and Students’ Argumentative Discourse

This study examined the learning opportunities provided to students through the use of complex geological data supporting scientific inquiry. Through analysis of argumentative discourse in a high school Earth science classroom, uses of US Geological Survey (USGS) data were contrasted with uses of geoscience textbook data. To examine these differences, we conducted a review of frameworks for argumentation analysis, and through adaptation to the research foci of this study, developed a new analytic approach. Applying this approach to student classroom discourse revealed the affordances and constraints of both the complex USGS datasets and the filtered textbook data sources. The challenges of teaching with complex data are presented.     

Becoming artist,becoming educated,becoming undone: toward a nomadic perspective of college student identity development

In this article, I place my ethnographic project among undergraduate university art students and their professor in dialog with Rosi Braidotti’s figuration of the nomadic subject and her reflections on the importance of creating theoretical alternatives for mapping the embedded and embodied social positions that we inhabit. As educational interlocutors, college students must negotiate expectations and categorizations about age-appropriate relations, career paths, and identity passageways, which are always already framed by Western psychological development discourses. Interested in loosening the grip of these closure-seeking and normalizing discursive practices, I argue for a revision of identity development grounded in a nomadic theory of the subject and engage my data through an alternative analytic of arts-informed assemblage in light of Braidotti’s ideas. In so doing, I uphold my feminist commitment to do theory as both critique and creativity, bringing into view poetic-enough writing and imagery as a response to the question how is it to be in the process of becoming?     

Staff involvement in the design of a key skills curriculum model: a case-study

This case-study follows a school as it struggles to prepare for the changes brought about by Curriculum 2000 and the new key skills qualification. It describes the curriculum debate within the senior management team as it balanced the conflicting needs of subject popularity and necessity. It relates how inherent structural flaws were uncovered in the proposed curriculum strategy, how this very failure was used as an opportunity to initiate staff involvement in the design of curriculum structures and how success was subsequently fashioned from the process. It is a story of failure, consideration, reflection and improvement, and offers some insight into the lessons learned by management and teaching staff as they reflect on the process of change and their own participation in it.     

Change and renewal: the role of a change team in improving student support

How do open and distance learning institutions review and renew themselves to ensure their continued fitness for purpose? Here we report on the work of a change team in the UK Open University, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning created to examine, innovate and improve student support. The existence of the Centre for five years from 2005 to 2010 enabled us to facilitate an extensive programme of practical support activities and to influence long-term university policy development. We are aware that very few institutions will have the luxury of such long-term funding (and do not expect it to be available again in the United Kingdom any time soon). However, we believe that there is much in models of change that can be applied more generally to improve learner support.     

The intellectual capital of schools: analysing government policy statements on school improvement in light of a new theorization

Ideology without competence is a dangerous vice. But competence without ideology is a limited virtue. (D. Miliband, Minister of State for School Standards, DfES)     

Intercultural comparative research: rethinking insider and outsider perspectives

A commonsense problematic positions comparative researchers as either inside or outside cultures, or their situation is considered so as to acknowledge cultural fluidity and fragmentation. This article rejects the objectivism of these positions to provide a relational account. Using the lens of social practice theory, comparative pedagogy is analysed and a case study provided, where pedagogy is described as a socially situated phenomenon and research on pedagogy as a contested field. Three relations are examined: researchers to pedagogy in processes of data generation; researchers to theories of and empirical research about pedagogy in processes of analysis; and theories of and empirical research about pedagogy to pedagogy in processes of validation. Methodological insights into the status, legitimacy and limitations of research findings are discussed, and a view of comparative pedagogy as craft apprenticeship is presented.