At the heart of the educational vocation is a drive to influence, to meaningfully affect the learning and development of others. For adult educators working in higher education, daily activities--from teaching classes to supervising student research to attending faculty meetings to sitting on advisory boards--are full of opportunities to…

Despite the ubiquity of staff soft skills programmes, few studies have examined why and how academic and corporate services staff utilise these programmes for self-care/governance. This study reports on findings from an ethnography of soft skills learning and development programmes (LDPs) in a UK university, focusing on interviews with programme…

In this paper, the author compares the conservative normative depictions of sweethearts in campus publications to representations of the figure in sorority newsletters by examining differences in the projection of domesticity, beauty, and passivity between the two types of publications. The author contends that the substantial variances between…

The aim of the present study was to test whether the content of a gender stereotype concerning general academic achievement matched the characteristics deemed to predict success in the fields of higher education dominated by women and men respectively. A sample of 207 undergraduate students rated the extent to which characteristics ascribed to…

As a result of environmental turbulence created by economic turmoil and shifting social policies, the world of higher education is experiencing widespread change. Student affairs professionals are well-positioned to influence the future direction of higher education and the impact education has for students and society. The NASPA 2012 conference…

Teaching within institutions that prototypically privilege the social order of language is often problematic for both genders, especially because we tend to occupy masculine lines of rhetoric. The "standards" that women adhere to are not always associated in the feminine construction, and when we question "standards," the…

In this paper I consider one aspect of how student writing is supported in the university. I focus on the use of the "writing frame", questioning its status as a vehicle for facilitating student voice, and in the process questioning how that notion is itself understood. I illustrate this by using examples from the story of the 1944 Hollywood film…

Purpose: This paper seeks to explore satisfactory and unsatisfactory classroom (student-lecturer) encounters in higher education from a student's perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The critical incident technique (CIT) is used to categorise positive and negative student-lecturer interactions, to reveal quality dimensions of the lecturer,…

Examined the effect of different symbolic coding stimuli on reproduction and generalization of modeled events in business students (N=80). Results indicated that presentation of learning points plays an important role in observational learning. (LLL)

Investigated perceptions of assertiveness among 80 college students who listed 10 words or phrases they perceived as descriptive of assertiveness. The descriptive words and phrases most often given were: pushy, rude, lack of sensitivity, to the point, direct, outgoing, and leadership. Positive words and phrases occurred with more frequency. (JAC)

College students (n=113) participated in study comparing effects of elaboration likelihood model (ELM) based assertion workshop with those of typical assertion workshop. ELM-based workshop was significantly better at producing favorable attitude change, greater intention to act assertively, and more favorable evaluations of workshop content.…

Based on 164 undergraduate business majors, we examined the relationship between satisfaction with major and Holland's vocational interests and with the Big Five and narrow personality traits. Contrary to our hypothesis, enterprising scores were unrelated to major satisfaction. As hypothesized, using ipsative and normative scores, investigative,…

This article reviews the differences between two types of workshops and a control group on the development of positive interviewing skills. An assertiveness training group, combined with the presentation of interviewing skills and a didactic group, were the two treatments. (Author)

As measured by a variety of dependent variables, assertion training was effective in modifying assertive behavior but ineffective with aggressive behavior in a group of low-assertive but aggressive college women. (Author)

Examined the relationship of anxiety, assertiveness, and locus of control to bulimia in college students. Those in therapy for bulimia (N=23) scored lower in assertivenss than did other clients in therapy (N=15) or those in the nonclient control group (N=18). All clients showed greater anxiety than did controls. (Author/BH)