scholarly journals “It’s Been a Good Reminder That Students Are Human Beings”: An Exploratory Inquiry of Instructors’ Rhetorical and Relational Goals During COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 62-77
Author(s):  
Victoria McDermott ◽  
Drew Ashby-King

As colleges and universities moved to remote learning during the Spring 2020 semester due to COVID-19, the traditional higher education classroom format was challenged. This study examines how instructors reconceptualized their rhetorical and relational goals in the pandemic classroom. A thematic analysis of 68 qualitative survey responses revealed that instructors adapted their rhetorical and relational approaches to instruction due to a perceived change in students’ needs. Moreover, findings suggest that instructors intend to continue to use many of these instructional changes in their post-pandemic classrooms. These conclusions confirm that instructors should consider contextual factors not only during but also after COVID-19. We close with practical recommendations for instructors beyond the pandemic classroom.

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaile S. Cannella ◽  
Mirka Koro-Ljungberg

Concern regarding capitalism, profiteering, and the corporatization of higher education is not new. A market focus that creates students as consumers and faculty as service providers has dominated global practices in colleges and universities for some time. Most recently, however, this more liberal market-driven focus has actually morphed away from a jurisdictional emphasis (with a potential focus on fairness) to forms of veridiction (neoliberal truth regimes) that legitimate intervention into all aspects of society, the environment, interpretations of the world around us, even into the physical individual bodies of human beings as well as the more-than-human. In higher education, this neoliberal saturation has led to changes that are of seismic proportion. The authors in this special issue describe their own research into, interpretations of, and life experiences as they attempt to survive within this neoliberal condition, and as they also generate counter conducts and ways of thinking without neoliberalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Anne Braund ◽  
Trixie James ◽  
Katrina Johnston ◽  
Louise Mullaney

Personal characteristics contributing to success in higher education has become an important area of focus in recent years. Duckworth’s (2007) grit framework shows positive correlations with a range of academic outcomes. This article explores the characteristics of grit in a study of female students who identified as mothers during their enrolment in an enabling program at CQUniversity Australia. Data was gathered from 284 participants and findings suggest that despite mothers facing competing challenges that conflict with study; demonstrating grit-ability is what enables success. The courage to begin; conscientious determination to achieve; resilience to overcome obstacles; endurance to persist; and striving for excellence were identified as key contributors to positive academic outcomes and personal fulfilment. Framework Methodology underpinned this thematic analysis using the grit terms of reference to examine survey responses. These findings highlight the relevance of grit as desirable student characteristics for experiencing success in enabling education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-692
Author(s):  
Shehla A. Yasin ◽  
Syeda Shahida Batool ◽  
Muhammad Asir Ajmal

In current study, aim was to explore effective academic leadership in Pakistani higher education institutes. It was an attempt to understand how people in academia perceive effective academic leadership and what are the qualities expected in an effective academic leader? It was also attempted to explore if academicians feel that there is a crisis of leadership in Pakistani higher education institutes? What are the reasons and solution for this crisis situation? Purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample of teachers, students, and psychologists. Three focus groups were conducted one after another. Sample (N = 21) included 13 women and 8 men with age range 21-50 years. Sample was selected from different private and public universities and hospitals of Lahore. Emerging themes were analyzed using bottom up thematic analysis. Results indicated that an effective academic leader should have IQ and EQ, be visionary, and should bring everyone together. The participants mostly agreed that there is leadership crisis in Pakistani higher education institutes. They described various reasons for the crisis situation which mainly implied the responsibility to existing leaders, infrastructure, social decline, and policies.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Mary Coleman

The author of this article argues that the two-decades-long litigation struggle was necessary to push the political actors in Mississippi into a more virtuous than vicious legal/political negotiation. The second and related argument, however, is that neither the 1992 United States Supreme Court decision in Fordice nor the negotiation provided an adequate riposte to plaintiffs’ claims. The author shows that their chief counsel for the first phase of the litigation wanted equality of opportunity for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as did the plaintiffs. In the course of explicating the role of a legal grass-roots humanitarian, Coleman suggests lessons learned and trade-offs from that case/negotiation, describing the tradeoffs as part of the political vestiges of legal racism in black public higher education and the need to move HBCUs to a higher level of opportunity at a critical juncture in the life of tuition-dependent colleges and universities in the United States. Throughout the essay the following questions pose themselves: In thinking about the Road to Fordice and to political settlement, would the Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs’ lawyers connect at the point of their shared strength? Would the timing of the settlement benefit the plaintiffs and/or the State? Could plaintiffs’ lawyers hold together for the length of the case and move each piece of the case forward in a winning strategy? Who were plaintiffs’ opponents and what was their strategy? With these questions in mind, the author offers an analysis of how the campaign— political/legal arguments and political/legal remedies to remove the vestiges of de jure segregation in higher education—unfolded in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the initiating lawyer in Ayers v. Waller and Fordice, Isaiah Madison


Author(s):  
Erin Debenport

This chapter draws on data from U.S. higher education to analyze the ways that the language used to describe sexual harassment secures its continued power. Focusing on two features viewed as definitional to sexual harassment, frequency and severity, the discussion analyzes three sets of online conversations about the disclosure of abuse in academia (a series of tweets, survey responses, and posts on a philosophy blog) from grammatical, pragmatic, and semiotic perspectives. Unlike most prior research, this chapter focuses on the language of victims rather than the intentions of harassers. The results suggest that speech act theory is unable to account fully for sexual harassment without accepting the relevance of perlocutionary effects. Using Gal and Irvine’s (2019) model of axes of differentiation, the chapter demonstrates how opposing discursive representations (of professors, sexual harassers, victims, and accusers) create a discursive space in which it becomes difficult for victims to report their harassers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6363
Author(s):  
Johanna Andrea Espinosa-Navarro ◽  
Manuel Vaquero-Abellán ◽  
Alberto-Jesús Perea-Moreno ◽  
Gerardo Pedrós-Pérez ◽  
Pilar Aparicio-Martínez ◽  
...  

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are key to create sustainable higher education institutions (HEIs). Most researchers focused on the students’ perspective, especially during the online teaching caused by COVID-19; however, university teachers are often forgotten, having their opinion missing. This study’s objective was to determine the factors that contribute to the inclusion of ICTs. The research based on a comparative study through an online qualitative survey focused on the inclusion and use of ICTs in two HEIs and two different moments (pre-and post-lockdowns). There were differences regarding country and working experience (p < 0.001), being linked to the ICTs use, evaluation of obstacles, and the role given to ICTs (p < 0.05). The COVID-19 caused modifications of the teachers’ perspectives, including an improvement of the opinion of older teachers regarding the essentialness of ICTs in the teaching process (p < 0.001) and worsening their perception about their ICTs skill (p < 0.05). Additionally, an initial model focused only on the university teachers and their use of ICTs has been proposed. In conclusion, the less experienced university teachers used more ICTs, identified more greatly the problematic factors, and considered more important the ICTs, with the perception of all teachers modified by COVID-19.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaufui Vincent Wong

This work has been done to recognize the various contributing disciplines in colleges and universities to achieving the global goals. One aim is to point out the many college disciplines internationally that would contribute to these goals. Only four out of the global goals seem not to be directly contributed to by sustainable engineering. A presentation of relevant publications has been made of the role of sustainable engineering in accomplishing the 17 global goals of the United Nations. The pervasiveness and long reach of the many branches of sustainable engineering are evident. The implied importance of good quality engineering schools and colleges worldwide cannot be refuted.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Franciele Bonatto ◽  
Luis Mauricio Martins de Resende ◽  
Joseane Pontes

Purpose This paper aims to clarify ambiguous results from previous research on the relationship between contextual factors, trust and supply chain governance (SCG). Design/methodology/approach This study carried out a systematic literature review in 11 databases, with articles published until 2018. Afterward, this study conducted a thematic analysis in 60 articles to address the contextual factors, governance structures and trust approaches raised in previous research. Findings The thematic analysis revealed that seven contextual factors influence the choice of contractual and relational mechanisms in supply chains: relationship history, environmental uncertainty, perceived risk, perceived justice, asset specificity, power asymmetry and interdependence. The findings explained the ambiguous results of past research by proposing that contractual and relational governance are complementary and that the presence of trust (affective and competence-based) moderates the relationship between contextual factors and SCG. Originality/value This research advances the SCG literature by proposing trust (affective and competence-based) as a moderating variable that fosters governance mechanisms in supply chain relationships.


1996 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Smart ◽  
Edward P. St. John

Two of the more promising lines of inquiry in efforts to understand the hypothesized linkage between organizational culture and effectiveness have focused on the differential effectiveness of organizations depending on their dominant culture type and their culture strength. The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether these two lines of inquiry operate in an independent or conditional manner in explaining the hypothesized linkage between organizational culture and the performance of a sample of four-year colleges and universities. The findings provide support for both lines of inquiry, albeit not entirely in a manner suggested by their respective proponents. For example, while culture type has a decidedly stronger independent effect on institutional performance than culture strength, the differences are clearly more pronounced on campuses with “strong” rather than “weak” cultures. The implications of these findings for research on and efforts to improve the performance of colleges and universities are discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document