The Composition of Governing Bodies of Higher Education Corporations

The Education Reform Act 1988 gave independence to polytechnics and the major colleges of higher education. From a position where they were the subject of tight and bureaucratic control by the maintaining local authorities, they have moved to one where responsibility for conducting their affairs in the hands of the small group of persons who constitute their governing bodies. This paper examines the composition of governing bodies in order to see the range of sizes adopted and how boards have been constituted within the permissible limits of the Act. It also touches upon some of the difficulties and ambiguities which have been created by the present legislation. A survey reveals that most institutions have decided to have larger boards which are not dissimilar to those which existed previously and few institutions have taken advantage of the flexibility of the Act and chosen to have small boards. It remains to be seem whether size and composition have any relevance to an institution's success or otherwise in the challenging years ahead.     

Video‐mediated Judgements of Personal Characteristics Based Upon Non‐verbal Cues

The process of forming initial judgements to do with a range of personal attributes such as age, marital status, personality, etc. plays an important part in making contact with other people and forming relationships with them (Kleinke, 1986). It has also been the subject of extensive psychological enquiry of late (Cook, 1984). The twofold objectives of the present investigation were, firstly, to establish the degree of correspondence between observers’ judgements based upon video presentations of subjects, and subjects’ actual age, marital status, religion, socio‐economic status and personality; and, secondly, to determine the types of nonverbal cue upon which such impressions were founded. Results revealed that only in the case of age did the correlation between observered and actual values of the variable reach significance. The nonverbal cues implicated seemed to be mostly to do with subjects’ appearance, hair and face. More broadly, appearance, as a general category of observation, was extensively represented throughout the study, irrespective of the accuracy of the specific judgement arrived at. Results are discussed within the context of existing research findings. Limitations of the study are identified and suggestions made as to ways in which this work may be extended, particularly in respect of the importance of video and television replays as an observational medium.     

A Re-Conceptualization of Rogers' Core Conditions: Implications for Research, Practice and Training

Rogers' core conditions remain influential in international counselling practice despite decades of equivocal research findings regarding their effectiveness. It has been argued that ambiguity and lack of clarity in Rogers' (1957) original definitions is a major factor in the development of misunderstanding and multiple operationalizations of the core conditions for research and training purposes. This paper presents an innovative re-conceptualization of the core conditions based on social psychological models of attitude. It is argued that this model has the potential to integrate existing work from a range of perspectives and provide a framework for future research and development.     

Student Preference Rates for Predominately Online,Compressed, or Traditionally Taught University Courses

Universities and colleges in the United States are actively searching for new ways to increase student enrollment as one means to offset recent government budget cuts in educational funding. One proposal at a particular institution involves transitioning a commuter university from a traditional semester length calendar to one that offers predominately online and compressed courses. University students responded to a survey, based on a number of variables, regarding their impressions of taking considerably more online and compressed courses in lieu of traditionally taught courses. While the students wanted to keep the traditional semester calendar, findings showed that some of the benefits of online and compressed teaching schedules were appealing.     

Higher order conditioning of a taste aversion

Two groups of rats each received 5 drops of NaCl solution from a dropper placed directly inside the mouth. The experimental group was then injected with lithium chloride to establish a conditioned taste aversion. The control group was injected 24 h later. After a recovery day the above procedures were repeated. On the next day both groups received 5 drops of a saccharin solution followed immediately by 5 drops of the NaCl solution. Subsequent preference tests established that the experimental group had learned an aversion to the saccharin solution as a result of its pairing with the NaCl solution which had previously been associated with poisoning. These results demonstrate that higher order conditioning of a taste aversion can be established using tastes as both the first-order stimulus and the second-order stimulus.