The president of the faculty senate, the head of the employee union, or the president of a student organization have designated leadership positions, yet they get little formal help to prepare them to assume their roles. A leadership development plan should rest on two major goals: prestige and perspective. (MLW)

This article examines a student poem about a common gendered experience in Guanajuato, Mexico, which was written by a student in a creative writing group the author led during a one-semester study abroad program she directs for CIEE (Council on International Educational Exchange). The article posits Guanajuato as a contact zone where Mexican…

Efforts to enhance the effectiveness of cross-cultural interventions have emphasized the need for counselors to assess their own as well as their client's cultural value systems. To assess cultural world views, the Cultural Attitudes Repertory Technique (CART), which examines the content and structure of an individual's personal system of cultural…

Critical thinking is seldom effective at encouraging students to challenge and examine preconceived positions. There is a tendency to use the rigorous questioning methods to defend preconceived positions and deflect the serious consideration of alternatives. An exercise that focused on the Cuban missile crisis is described. (MLW)

A readiness for effective empathy training develops during the same time period that secure abstract thought, augmented moral development, and the ability to introspect appear--during the college years. College females initially showed higher empathy scores, but both genders were equally teachable, being most effectively taught during college…

In two experiments, students overheard two computer-controlled virtual agents discussing four computer literacy topics in dialog discourse and four in monologue discourse. In Experiment 1, the virtual tutee asked a series of deep questions in the dialog condition, but only one per topic in the monologue condition in both studies. In the dialog…

European American educators can no longer ignore or presume to "serve" other sociocultural groups simply by changing those groups. Within a democratic and pluralistic society, individuals must be equally willing to modify their own beliefs and actions in light of the experiences and concerns of others. In doing so, "mainstream…

The 2008 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a joint conference with the Michigan World Language Association, focused on learning about the diverse backgrounds and needs of today's students and discovering new ways to help them succeed in reaching the goal of language proficiency. A wide variety of workshops and…

Examines developmental differences among children and adults in causal reasoning concerning story characters who were offered various inducements to behave helpfully. Results indicate that external consequences enhanced attributions of internal motivation for kindergartners and reduced such attributions for older subjects. (Author/DB)

As educators endeavor to engage an increasingly diverse student population, the curricular inclusion of elements of popular culture has been found to represent a particularly meaningful and successful approach. Research has consistently documented how utilizing issues of interest to students enhances affective links to the classroom and engenders…

Despite the conceptual importance of impression motivation in predicting social anxiety (Leary & Kowalski, 1995; Schlenker & Leary, 1982), no research has tested the link between impression motivation specifically regarding one's physical appearance (appearance impression motivation, or AIM) and social physique anxiety (SPA). The purpose of this…

Modern physics and feminism are two seemingly disparate areas of human endeavor that pose important alternatives to and transformations of contemporary world views. Modern physics is a radical shift from the world view of classical physics, and feminism is a radical shift from the world view of patriarchy. Both emphasize interrelatedness and…

An American Indian (Arapaho) educator portrays various levels of student response and receptivity toward teaching from an Indigenous perspective by recounting some of his teaching experiences at universities in Montana, Canada, and Australia. A class of Native students who had to negotiate for their grades in a treaty written in Arapaho and…

A Native American literature professor's account of college students' cross-cultural field experience on two Indian reservations near the Grand Canyon shows how the experience enhanced student understanding of the Native American belief in the people and land as one, storytelling and a sense of the sacred, and the history and impact of…

Examines the results of 258 undergraduates rating of each others' self-acceptance and acceptance of others. The students had previously participated in 32 small, interpersonal learning groups. They rated each other on subscale items including dominant/submissive, expressive/guarded, and active/passive. Discusses the general trends and differences…