Cultural Competence and Institutional Contradictions: The Hydropower Referendum

This study explores a corporate campaign to pass a referendum to enable the development of a hydropower plant in a small Swedish community. In the changing institutional context that grounds this case, the organization needed to develop communicative practices that embodied “cultural competence,” a set of processes identified as critical for the legitimacy and success of business organizations in the emerging global/intersectoral environment. Findings suggest that the MNC's communication strategy captured important components of cultural competence. However, institutional contradictions impeded enactment of the strategy and resulted in delegitimizing paradoxical communication. The results indicate that organizational awareness of institutional change and culturally competent strategy are insufficient without special attention to contradictions and resultant communicative paradoxes embodied within a particular institutional context. The importance of a reflective communication approach that engages contradictions and tensions in the surrounding micro–macro institutional contexts is underscored.     

Listening Competence in Initial Interactions II: Applying Trait Centrality to Discover the Relative Placement of Listening Competence Among Implicit Competency Theories

This article explores the relative placement of listening competence within other implicit theories used to form judgments of interlocutor competence. Two studies explore the relations among communicative competence, social skills, and listening competence and various attributes that are purportedly implied by each. Study 1 reveals that very few attributes are uniquely related to any one implicit theory. Study 2 demonstrates that listening competence is located subordinately to communicative competence. The discussion focuses on what these studies add to the competency literature and how future research can continue to explore implicit competency theories.     

Instructors' and Students' Perspectives of Student Nagging: Frequency,Appropriateness, and Effectiveness

Nagging is a persistent tactic students use to persuade instructors. The purpose of this study was to compare student (n = 280) and instructor (n = 97) perceptions of student nagging in the classroom, and to examine the relationship between student nagging and instructor satisfaction. Results show that instructors perceive students as using four nagging strategies with significantly greater frequency than students do. In addition, students perceive all seven nagging strategies to be significantly more effective and appropriate than instructors. Finally, there is a significant relationship between particular nagging strategies and instructor satisfaction.     

The Effect of Perceived Teacher Burnout on Credibility

This study investigated the effect of perceived teacher burnout on perceived teacher credibility. One hundred eighty-two college students were randomly exposed to a written scenario manipulating the level of perceived teacher burnout (high or low) and responded to a scale measuring perceived teacher credibility in reference to the scenario. Results of one-way multivariate analyses of variance indicated that perceived teacher burnout has a negative impact on perceived teacher competence, caring, and trustworthiness. Low-burnout teachers are perceived as more credible than high-burnout teachers.     

Flirting Competence: An Experimental Study on Appropriate and Effective Opening Lines

An experiment was conducted to examine the appropriateness and effectiveness of five flirtatious opening lines enacted by a male participant to initiate conversation with a female participant. Video messages were constructed to represent the following opening lines: direct introductions, direct compliments, humor attempts, cute–flippant lines, and third-party introductions. Participants were 642 college students who viewed one of these five videos and reported on the appropriateness and effectiveness of an opening line after controlling for perceptions of actor physical attractiveness. Results indicated that participants rated the third-party introduction and direct introduction opening lines as the most appropriate, whereas the third-party introduction was perceived as the most effective. Direct compliments, humor attempts, and cute–flippant lines were rated as equally inappropriate and ineffective.     

A Competence-Based Science Learning Framework Illustrated Through the Study of Natural Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction

This article proposes a competence-based learning framework for science teaching, applied to the study of ‘big ideas’, in this case to the study of natural hazards and disaster risk reduction (NH&DRR). The framework focuses on new visions of competence, placing emphasis on nurturing connectedness and behavioral actions toward resilience and sustainability. The framework draws together competences familiarly expressed as cognitive knowledge and skills, plus dispositions and adds connectedness and action-related behaviors, and applies this by means of a progression shift associated with NH&DRR from abilities to capabilities. The target is enhanced scientific literacy approached through an education through science focus, amplified through the study of a big idea, promotion of sustained resilience in the face of disaster and the taking of responsibilities for behavioral actions. The framework is applied to a learning progression for each interrelated education dimension, thus serving as a guide for both the development of abilities and as a platform for stimulating student capabilities within instruction and assessment.     

Contributions of Learning Through Analogies to the Construction of Secondary Education Pupils’ Verbal Discourse about Chemical Change

This article analyzes the relationship between pupils’ level of understanding of the analogies proposed in class while working with a model of chemical change and their competence at constructing a coherent verbal discourse of that model in both its macroscopic and submicroscopic representations. The study participants were 35 pupils in their 3rd year of compulsory secondary education (14–15 years of age) who had been studying chemical change for several weeks in their subject of Physics and Chemistry. The results suggested that the pupils generally understood the proposed analogies quite well, and that a good proportion of them assimilated adequately the verbal discourse inherent in the proposed model of chemical change. There was also a statistically significant association between modeling and analogical thinking. In particular, the pupils with greater understanding of the analogies being considered were also those who tended to show a greater ability to verbalize the model of chemical change and reason with it when solving the tasks they had been set. These results concur with the literature by suggesting that a link exists between analogical thinking and modeling, and that learning with analogies has a positive influence on the construction of the chemical change model.     

The Function of Parental Communication Patterns: Reflection-Enhancing and Reflection-Discouraging Approaches

This study explored patterns and effects of communication apprehension and classroom apprehension in Nigerian classrooms. Significant correlation was found between student communication apprehension and student classroom apprehension. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences in classroom apprehension by class type, but no significant differences in communication apprehension by choice of occupation. Perceptions of academic performance were negatively associated with classroom apprehension scores.     

Differences in Conversational Skills as a Function of Attachment Style: A Follow-up Study

A recent set of studies demonstrated that people evaluate their own and their partner's social skills differently as a function of attachment style. The present study extends this work by examining attachment-style differences in four conversational skills—expressiveness, composure, other-orientation, and interaction management—as rated by observers. To test for attachment-style differences, romantic couples were videotaped as they discussed relational problems or conflict issues. Based on a pretest, one of the romantic partners was targeted as representative of the secure, dismissive, fearful avoidant, or preoccupied attachment style. Two dimensions related to attachment—anxiety and avoidance—were also investigated in regard to their relations with conversational skills. Results suggest that the behavioral profiles largely reflect attachment theoretical assumptions for secures, dismissives, and fearful avoidants, and to a lesser extent, preoccupieds.     

调整大学英语教材以增加中国文化渗透应慎行

中国文化走出去战略意义日益提高,而中国大学英语教育中中国文化缺失的问题又日益凸显,由此有教育者疾呼应调整大学英语教材以增加中国文化渗透。而本文作者则认为这建议有不合理之处,首先,中国文化失语症的根本原因是文化知识缺失,而非英语表达方式缺失;其次,在调整过程中,"具体选择哪些内容"和"具体在哪个阶段使用"这两个关键问题目前尚没有得到合理解答。同时,此类建议对提高跨文化交际能力的实际效用并不大。因此,本文作者认为调整大学英语教材以增加中国文化渗透应慎行。