Chicana, Indian and Sudanese Perspectives of Teaching in the Academy: Three Levels of Experience in the Teaching-Learning and Social Environment

“Women of color from any culture or country face additional barriers in predominantly white institutions. This panel presents perspectives and experiences of three women from three cultures and three different levels of academia—a Chicana Latino visiting professor, a graduate teaching assistant from India, and a Sudanese graduate research assistant.”

The Importance of Teaching Students How to Read to Comprehend Mathematical Language

In this action research study of my classroom of 8th and 9th grade Algebra I students, I investigated if there are any benefits for the students in my class to learn how to read, translate, use, and understand the mathematical language found daily in their math lessons. I discovered that daily use and practice of the mathematical language in both written and verbal form, by not only me but by my students as well, improved their understanding of the textbook instructions, increased their vocabulary and also increased their understanding of their math lessons. I also found that my students remembered the mathematical material better with constant use of mathematical language and terms. As a result of this research, I plan to continue stressing the use of mathematical language and vocabulary in my classroom and will try to develop new ways to help students to read, understand, and remember mathematical language they find daily in their textbooks.

When the Romance is Over: Follower Perspectives of Aversive Leadership

While leadership is indisputably one of the most pervasive topics in our society, the vast majority of existing research has focused on leadership as a positive force. Taking a follower- centric approach to the study of leadership, we integrate research on the Romance of Leadership and the dark side of leadership by examining followers’ perceptions of aversive leadership in the context of public high schools. Although Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) demonstrated that the Romance of Leadership also includes the overattribution of negative outcomes to leaders, subsequent research has failed to explore the implications of this potentially darker side of romanticizing leaders. Specifically, we examine perceptions of principals’ aversive leadership and traditional affective, behavioral, and performance outcomes of followers in a sample of 342 dyads. Followers assessed their principals’ leadership behaviors and self-rated their levels of job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and resistance, while principals assessed their followers’ citizenship behaviors, complaining behaviors, and job performance. Results show that perceptions of aversive leadership are positively related to follower resistance and negatively related to followers’ job satisfaction. In addition, a usefulness analysis revealed that follower-rated variables were significantly related to perceptions of aversive leadership above and beyond leader-rated variables, suggesting that the relationship between negative outcomes and aversive leadership may be more constructed than real. In sum, the tendency to romanticize leadership may also lead to a proclivity to readily misattribute or overattribute blame to leadership as a convenient scapegoat for negative outcomes. Alors que le leadership est incontestablement l’un des thèmes les plus envahissants de notre société, la grande majorité des recherches existantes a porté sur le leadership en tant que force positive. En adoptant une approche centrée sur le suiveur dans l’étude du leadership, nous examinant la perception qu’ont les collaborateurs du leadership insupportable dans le contexte des lycées publics. Quoique Meindl, Ehrlich, et Dukerich (1985) aient montré que la Romance du Leadership inclut aussi la surattribution de résultats négatifs aux leaders, les recherches ultérieures ont méconnu les implications de cet aspect potentiellement plus sombre des leaders idylliques. Nous analysons en particulier sur un échantillon de 342 dyades la perception du leadership répulsif du proviseur et les résultats habituels des collaborateurs en rapport avec l’affectivité, le comportement et les performances. Les collaborateurs ont noté les comportements de leadership de leur proviseur et auto-évalué leur niveau de satisfaction au travail, d’efficience et de résistance, alors que les proviseurs appréciaient les conduites de citoyenneté et de revendication, ainsi que la performance professionnelle. Les résultats montrent que la perception du leadership répulsif est Positivement reliée à la résistance du suiveur et négativement à sa satisfaction professionnelle. En outre, une analyse des plus fructueuses a révélé que les variables évaluées par les collaborateurs étaient significativement en relation avec la perception du leadership répulsif, bien plus qu’avec les variables évaluées par les leaders, ce qui indique que la relation entre les résultats médiocres et le leadership négatif serait plus construite que réelle. Au total, le penchant à l’idéalisation du leadership peut aussi bien conduire à une propension à trop facilement condamner à tort et à travers le leadership qu’à la désignation d’un bouc émissaire tout trouvé pour expliquer de mauvais résultats.

The Impact of Teaching Presence in Intensive Online Courses on Perceived Learning and Sense of Community: A Mixed Methods Study

This mixed methods concurrent triangulation design study was predicated upon two models that advocated a connection between teaching presence and perceived learning: the Community of Inquiry Model of Online Learning developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000); and the Online Interaction Learning Model by Benbunan-Fich, Hiltz, and Harasim (2005). The objective was to learn how teaching presence impacted students’ perceptions of learning and sense of community in intensive online distance education courses developed and taught by instructors at a regional comprehensive university. In the quantitative phase online surveys collected relevant data from participating students (N = 397) and selected instructional faculty (N = 32) during the second week of a three-week Winter Term. Student information included: demographics such as age, gender, employment status, and distance from campus; perceptions of teaching presence; sense of community; perceived learning; course length; and course type. The students claimed having positive relationships between teaching presence, perceived learning, and sense of community. The instructors showed similar positive relationships with no significant differences when the student and instructor data were compared. The qualitative phase consisted of interviews with 12 instructors who had completed the online survey and replied to all of the open-response questions. The two phases were integrated using a matrix generation, and the analysis allowed for conclusions regarding teaching presence, perceived learning, and sense of community. The findings were equivocal with regard to satisfaction with course length and the relative importance of the teaching presence components. A model was provided depicting relationships between and among teaching presence components, perceived learning, and sense of community in intensive online courses.

Making Learning Visible: Peer Review and the Scholarship of Teaching

This is the promotional brochure from the March 2004 national conference, Making Learning Visible: Peer Review and the Scholarship of Teaching. This conference was hosted by the UNL Peer Review of Teaching project and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Traces, Patterns, Texture: In Search of Aesthetic Teaching/Learning Encounters

This inquiry reveals the crucial guidance of teachers toward surveying the capacity and needs of students, the formation of ideas, acting upon ideas, fostering connections, seeing potential, making judgments, and arranging conditions. Each aesthetic trace causes me to wonder how teachers learn to create experiences that foster student participation in the world aesthetically. The following considerations surface: • Given the emphasis in schools on outcomes and results, how do we encourage teachers to focus on acts of mind instead of end products in their work with students? • Given the orientations toward technical rationality, to fixed sequence, how do we help teachers experience fluid, purposeful learning adventures with students in which the imagi¬nation is given room to play? • Given the tendency to conceive of planning in teaching as the deciding of everything in advance, how do we help teachers and students become attuned to making good judgments derived from within learning experiences? • How do we help teachers build dialogical multivoiced conversations instead of monolithic curriculum? • What do we do to recover the pleasure dwelling in subject matter? How do we get teachers and students to engage thoughtfully in meaningful learning as opposed to covering curriculum7 • A capacity to attend sensitively, to perceive the complexity of relationships coming together in any teaching/learning experience seems critical. How do we help teachers and students attend to the unity of a learning experience and the play of meanings that arises from such undergoing and doing? The traces, patterns, and texture evidenced locate tremendous hope and wondrous possibilities alive within aesthetic teaching/learning encounters. It is such aliveness I encountered in the grade 4 art classroom that opened this account and continues to compel my attention. Possibilities for teaching, learning, and teacher education emerge. I am convinced they are most worthy of continued pursuit.

School of Natural Resource Sciences

Good afternoon. Thank you for asking me to be with you today; I welcome this opportunity to talk with you, to hear what you're thinking, and to participate with you in an exchange of ideas. I've been asked to make some prepared remarks this afternoon, and when those are ended I welcome your ideas, your questions, and your comments. I look forward to more discussions with you at other times, as well. I do have open hours Friday afternoons, and encourage faculty and staff to stop by to visit, to share an idea, to ask a question, or to just visit. Sometimes duties call me away, as they will for the next few Fridays, but I try to be available as many Friday afternoons as possible for drop-in visitors. I hope you'll be among them. As a big believer in the land grant university, with our mission of teaching, research, and extension education, I also am a big believer that it takes all of us, working together, to fulfill that mission.