Breaking the tyranny of office hours: Overcoming professor avoidance

ABSTRACT

Studies have found that Faculty–Student Interaction (FSI) has many positive benefits for students including academic support, professional development, mentoring, and career planning. Research-intensive universities exhibit the lowest levels of faculty–student interaction within higher education. This article utilises qualitative methods to explore faculty, student, and staff perceptions of faculty–student interactions, particularly those that take place out of the classroom, at a research-intensive public U.S. university. We identify social distance between faculty and students based on unequal status within a rigid, hierarchically-organised culture as a key barrier to FSI. We then discuss methods that some of the faculty in our study used to mitigate their social distance with students in an effort to increase FSI.     

Channel One Revisited: Prospective Teachers and the Role of American Higher Education

This study examined perceptions of college of education students and their experiences with Channel One, a privately-owned news service used in public education. Given that about one-third of middle and high schoolers in the US view the broadcast every school day, the authors surveyed 172 freshmen to discern their views and attitudes toward Channel One programming and commercials and the role colleges and universities might play in relation to this media service. While most studies on Channel One have been conducted from a K-12 point of view, the goal of this study was to reconsider the topic from the perspective of prospective teachers and post-secondary education. A. J. Angulo  is Assistant Professor of Social Foundations, Winthrop University. He received an Ed.D. and Ed.M. from Harvard University. His research interests include history of education, technology and education, and student rights. Susan K. Green  is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Winthrop University. She received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Loyola University, Chicago and a Ph.D. in educational psychology and research from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her interests include classroom assessment, motivational and instructional strategies to promote learning, and multicultural issues in education.     

The Role of Study Habits in Foreign Language Courses

The purpose of this study was to determine which study habits distinguish successful from unsuccessful foreign language learners. Participants were 219 college students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, enrolled in either Spanish, French, German or Japanese classes. A canonical discriminant analysis (F [6, 117], p < 0.0001; canonical R = 0.92) revealed that, compared to their high-performing counterparts, students with the lowest levels of foreign language performance tended to report that: (a) they frequently include a lot of irrelevant or unimportant information in their notes; (b) when they have difficulty with their assignments, they do not seek help from their instructor; (c) they put their lecture notes away after taking the test and never consult them again; (d) they have to be in the mood before attempting to study; (e) they have a tendency to doodle or to daydream when they are trying to study; and (f) they do not look up in a dictionary the meanings of words that they do not understand. Implications are discussed.     

The Acquisition of Communication Skills by People with Brain Injury: Some comparisons with children with autism

This research identifies the extent to which different contexts shape and modify the language and behaviours of four people with acquired brain injury. Comparisons are made with factors which can influence the language acquisition of children with autism because it is postulated that children with autism also have a particular brain injury. The comparison does not end there as the criteria for effective management necessary to nourish the communication skills of both groups appears similar. The four contexts used to shape and evaluate the language of people with brain injury include their own home, a residential camp with maximum support and enriched activity, a post camp period with comparable support, followed by a return to their own home with very limited support. Measures of communication skills demonstrate the success of the enriched camp facility. This was characterised by planning, structured support, and expectation of success from the participants. Their motivation and ability to communicate generally far exceeded the communication skills that each person with brain injury demonstrated when organised activity and sustained support is not available.     

Reconsidering Standards and Criteria

An early debate about the nature of setting standards on educational achievement tests centered on the extent to which resulting standards were arbitrary. Subsequent research in the area has advanced solutions to many practical standard setting problems, but the more fundamental issue regarding the empirical grounding of judgmental standard setting procedures has remained unresolved and largely unaddressed. This article reviews some of the salient elements of the debate about the nature of standard setting on educational assessments and suggests that the dispute can never be satisfactorily resolved within the current paradigm. A reconcep-tualization of the nature of standard setting is proposed, and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Training courses in personal counselling

The paper, Training Courses in Personal Counselling, by J. M. Fuster starts by depicting the local situation in India. On the one hand, much personal counselling is done by astrologers, palm-readers and elders; and, on the other hand, training programmes in personal counselling are either non-existent or of poor quality in Indian Universities. Hence the urgent need for good training programmes in personal counselling.In order to meet this need, though in a very limited way, the author started Xavier Institute of Counselling at St. Xavier's College, Bombay. He trains people on the model of counselling of Carkhuff since 1973. Thus he has conducted 34 training courses of, at least, 50 hours duration each for 402 trainees in 5 countries India. Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Spain and Italy.The author gives a picture of the population that benefits from these courses in terms of the various professions they belong to. He also reports the findings of an evaluative study, which was started in 1978. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the effects of the training courses on the past trainees' daily work. 262 questionnaires were sent to past trainees in India and Sri Lanka. 94 of them or 35 per cent were returned. Based on the data of these 94 returns, it appears that, on the average, the training courses in personal counselling have had a helpful influence on this group of 94 past trainees. About the rest, we can only guess from these data, but we do not know for sure. I say on the average, for the ranges of the ratings on the 20 items of the questionnaire were 3 to 5 for most items in the diploma-holders group, and 1 to 5 for a few items and 2 to 5 foor most items in the nondiploma-holders group.That means that, while for most of the 94 past trainees the courses have had a very helpful or helpful influence in most items of the questionnaire, they have had a negative or very negative influence on some items of the questionnaire for a very few trainees.From the remarks they wrote on the questionnaire, it appears that some trainees had joined the course in search of therapy for their own personal problems. As this was not the objective of the course, their need was not met. As one trainee wrote: After attending a course of therapy for three months immediately after the counselling course, I feel that the counselling course was a waste of time, energy and money. From this remark we trainers should learn to screen the candidates for the course very carefully and to ascertain their needs.Table I gives a picture of the past trainees in terms of their professions. Tabel II shows the statements of the questionnaire and the mean ratings given by the diploma-holders group and by the nondiploma-holders group. A Chart shows graphically the model of Carkhuff.     

Mild head injury as a source of developmental disabilities.

The hospital-reported incidence of mild head injury among children indicates a prevalence of 2% to 3% in high-school-aged adolescents (14 to 18 years). Yet, our survey of 616 high school adolescents suggests that light and mild head injury (not necessarily leading to hospital admission) is almost 10 times this level. Despite the common notion that such injury is generally benign, we found significant relationships in our sample between reported head injury and hyperactivity, stuttering, mixed handedness, and dislike of mathematics.