The communication anxiety inventory: Validation of state‐and context‐communication apprehension

Research reported in this paper investigates the reconceptualization (McCroskey, 1984) of communication apprehension (CA), focusing on the relationship between context‐CA and state‐CA. The validity of the reconceptualization can be enhanced by demonstrating that state‐CA (level of fear and anxiety) is systematically related to context‐CA (predisposition). Two research studies using a new operational measures of state‐CA and context‐CA, the Communication Anxiety Inventory, offer empirical support for the relationship between context‐CA and state‐CA. Results show that context‐CA explains a minimum of 50% of the state‐CA variance. Conclusions suggest that level of fear or anxiety varies closely with context‐CA and that the new scales have strong predictive validity.     

The affective orientation to communication: Conceptual and empirical distinctions

Affectively oriented (AO) individuals are people who are aware of their emotional states, value that information, and use it to guide social interaction. Although this concept sounds similar to others related to self‐awareness, emotionality, and patterns of information seeking, the process is both conceptually and empirically unique.

Study One compared individuals on AO and several measures which share underlying dimensions: affect intensity, self‐consciousness, extroversion, neuroticism, monitoring vs. blunting behavior style, and beliefs about romance. Affective orientation was moderately related to affect intensity and private self‐consciousness, and exhibited small correlations with monitoring of information‐seeking, extroversion, and idealism of romantic beliefs. Study Two assessed the stability of AO responses. Across a 4‐week time period AO remained highly consistent and thus did not appear to be a function of feelings at the time.     

Sex differences in emotional reactions to discovered deception

This study explores sex differences in perceptions of discovered deception, and the subsequent emotional reactions that are experienced by relational partners. Drawing upon research examining deception, relational communication, and gender, several hypotheses were developed and tested in a sample of 190 respondents who had recently discovered the lie of a friend or romantic partner. The data were consistent with the hypotheses. Women were more likely than men to rate lying as an unacceptable form of behavior within both friendship and romantic relationships. In addition, women rated the act of lying (regardless of what was lied about) as more significant, and reported more negative emotional reactions upon discovering deception than did men. Generalized communicative suspicion functioned to enhance the intensity of emotional reactions for women, but not for men. Implications of the current results for the study of deception are discussed.     

Enhancing Communication and Language Development in Young Children With Developmental Delays and Disorders

Research concerning the determinants affecting access to postsecondary education has primarily been conducted in two spheres: academic preparation and financial aid. Although these two strands of literature are often treated as oppositional hypotheses, they need not be. This article fuses the two bodies of research while discussing the relatively untreated role of information concerning both academic preparation and financial aid as an important determinant in a student's probability of accessing postsecondary education. The evolution of empirical models regarding important determinants in postsecondary access are presented with the proposition of next steps, including the role of information, that will allow for a more fully specified model in studying what variables affect whether a student continues her education after high school graduation.     

Partners in School: An Innovative Parent-Teacher Consultation Model for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT

Little research examines the best ways to improve communication between parents and teachers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its effect on child outcomes. The present study tests an innovative parent-teacher consultation model, entitled Partners in School. The goal of Partners in School is to improve parent-teacher communication about evidence-based practices (EBPs) and, subsequently, outcomes for children with ASD. Participants were 26 teachers and 49 parents of children with ASD from a large urban public school district. Parents and teachers completed measures of their communication and child outcomes prior to and after receiving consultation through Partners in School. Results indicated that parents and teachers perceived improvements in child outcomes after participation in Partners in School. Changes in parent-teacher communication also were associated with changes in some child outcomes. Discussion highlights the important role of communication in consultations targeting family–school partnerships for children with ASD.     

From Parental Involvement to Children's Mathematical Performance: The Role of Mathematics Anxiety

This study examined whether children's mathematics anxiety serves as an underlying pathway between parental involvement and children's mathematics achievement. Participants included 78 low-income, ethnic minority parents and their children residing in a large urban center in the northeastern United States. Parents completed a short survey tapping several domains of parental involvement, and children were assessed on mathematics anxiety, whole number arithmetic, word problems, and algebraic reasoning. Research Findings: The results indicated that parents influence children's mathematics achievement by reducing mathematics anxiety, particularly for more difficult kinds of mathematics. Specifically, the mediation analyses demonstrated that parental home support and expectations influenced children's performance on word problems and algebraic reasoning by reducing children's mathematics anxiety. Mathematics anxiety did not mediate the relationship between home support and expectations and whole number arithmetic. Practice or Policy: Policies and programs targeting parental involvement in mathematics should focus on home-based practices that do not require technical mathematical skills. Parents should receive training, resources, and support on culturally appropriate ways to create home learning environments that foster high expectations for children's success in mathematics.     

Programming Pluralism: Using Learning Analytics to Detect Patterns in the Learning of Computer Programming

New high-frequency, automated data collection and analysis algorithms could offer new insights into complex learning processes, especially for tasks in which students have opportunities to generate unique open-ended artifacts such as computer programs. These approaches should be particularly useful because the need for scalable project-based and student-centered learning is growing considerably. In this article, we present studies focused on how students learn computer programming, based on data drawn from 154,000 code snapshots of computer programs under development by approximately 370 students enrolled in an introductory undergraduate programming course. We use methods from machine learning to discover patterns in the data and try to predict final exam grades. We begin with a set of exploratory experiments that use fully automated techniques to investigate how much students change their programming behavior throughout all assignments in the course. The results show that students’ change in programming patterns is only weakly predictive of course performance. We subsequently hone in on 1 single assignment, trying to map students’ learning process and trajectories and automatically identify productive and unproductive (sink) states within these trajectories. Results show that our process-based metric has better predictive power for final exams than the midterm grades. We conclude with recommendations about the use of such methods for assessment, real-time feedback, and course improvement.     

Part-time faculty status and student evaluation of teaching: An analysis of criminal justice classes

Although part-time (p/t) faculties constitute a growing proportion of college instructors, there is little work on their level of teaching effectiveness relative to full-time (f/t) faculty. Previous work on a key indicator of perceived teaching effectiveness, student evaluation of teaching (SET), and faculty status (p/t/ vs f/t) is marked by a series of shortcomings including lack of a systematic theoretical framework and lack of multivariate statistical analysis techniques to check for possible spuriousness. The present study corrects for these shortcomings. Data consist of SETs from 175 sections of criminal justice classes taught at a Midwestern urban university. Controls are introduced for variables drawn from the literature and include ascribed characteristics of the professor, grade distribution, and structural features of the course (e.g., level, size). The results of a multivariate regression analysis indicate that even after controlling for the other predictors of SETs, p/t faculty receive significantly higher student evaluation scores than f/t faculty. Further, faculty status was the most important predictor of SETs. The results present the first systematic evidence on faculty status and SETs.     

Global Learning Communities: A Comparison of Online Domestic and International Science Class Partnerships

The conception of Global Learning Communities (GLCs) was researched to discover potential benefits of the use of online technologies that facilitated communication and scientific data sharing outside of the normal classroom setting. 1,419 students in 635 student groups began the instructional unit. Students represented the classrooms of 33 teachers from the USA, 6 from Thailand, 7 from Australia, and 4 from Germany. Data from an international environmental education project were analyzed to describe grades 7–9 student scientific writing in domestic US versus international–US classroom online partnerships. The development of an argument analytic and a research model of exploratory data analysis followed by statistical testing were used to discover and highlight different ways students used evidence to support their scientific claims about temperature variation at school sites and deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Findings show modest gains in the use of some evidentiary discourse components by US students in international online class partnerships compared to their US counterparts in domestic US partnerships. The analytic, research model, and online collaborative learning tools may be used in other large-scale studies and learning communities. Results provide insights about the benefits of using online technologies and promote the establishment of GLCs.