Untangling the Threads: Networks,community and teacher learning in the National Writing Project

From 1998 to 2000, we studied two sites of the National Writing Project to find out whether network learning ever finds its way into teachers' classrooms. In the process of observing the 5-week invitational institute (purported to be the key to understanding the National Writing Project), we found that teacher learning and becoming engaged in a professional community revealed a set of social practices. These practices provide the core of this important professional development program-- a core that is recreated in sites all over the country, organized in a network-like organizational form. This complex, layered national network, at its best, provides a model for teacher development involving teachers in a professional community situated in teachers' practice.     

Academic developer identity: how we know who we are

This paper explores academic developer identity by applying self-concept theory and appreciative inquiry to the personal journeys of two academic developers. Self-attribution, social comparison and reflected appraisals are presented and applied to explain how academic developers form their identities. Sociological principles are incorporated to describe the recursive informing of academic development and developer identities. The presentation of implications positions academic developers as higher education leaders.     

BOOK REVIEW

With the advent of circular 9/92 it became clear that students on secondary ITT courses would have to spend at least one hundred and twenty days in schools. This clearly requires a very high level of cooperation between teachers in schools and tutors in Colleges.

Ian Wood, a College Tutor, and Philip Wood, a school teacher, both of whom had been working together in ITT for several years, decided to improve on their levels of co‐operation by swapping roles for one day per week for the Easter Term 1995. This article is an account of some of their feelings and findings during this term.     

Electronic Reserve on a Regional Campus: The Evolution of the Service

Since the introduction of university regional campuses in Ohio, providing library services has been challenging. Because of new technologies, restricted budgets, and fewer staff, even recently implemented methods and procedures must be reexamined and revised. This article provides an overview of one regional campus library's evolving relationship with the main campus during the implementation and evolution of an electronic reserve system. The history and current use of a course management system is discussed along with the challenges faced by staff in the evolution of reserve services.     

Applied communication research: Unbounded and for good reason

This study explores how audiences seek information from social and traditional media, and what factors affect media use during crises. Using the social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) model, an examination of crisis information and sources reveals that audiences use social media during crises for insider information and checking in with family/friends and use traditional media for educational purposes. Convenience, involvement, and personal recommendations encourage social and traditional media use; information overload discourages use of both. Humor and attitudes about the purpose of social media discourage use of social media, while credibility encourages traditional media use. Practically, findings stressed the importance of third-party influence in crisis communication and the need for using both traditional and social media in crisis response.     

In a different mode: Masculine styles of communicating closeness

A number of contributors to Journal of Applied Communication Research have demonstrated communication research and theory can inform practical conduct in sundry situations. Less addressed has been the pragmatic potential of research to reform its own practice. Believing research is ideally self‐reflexive, we apply principles of scholarly inquiry to evaluate knowledge about gender and communication in close relationships. We document a prevalent bias that favors feminine styles of relating, characterized by verbal, emotional disclosure, and that devalues activity‐focused modes empirically more associated with masculinity. We then trace the presence of this bias in textbooks on gender and communication and interpersonal relationships, and we suggest teaching that relies on a non‐inclusive model of intimacy may misguide students’ communicative expectations and interpretations and may misdirect practical conduct in friendships and romantic relationships. Finally, we return to existing scholarship to extract information about masculine styles of experiencing and expressing closeness as a starting point for more inclusive research and teaching about gender, communication and human relationships.