Debbie Storrs

Mentoring expectations and realities: an analysis of metaphorical thinking among female undergraduate protegés and their mentors in a university mentoring programme

This article describes the differences between mentors’ and protégés’ expectations and realities regarding mentoring relationships and goals. Faculty and senior undergraduate mentors and female undergraduate protegés who participated in a formal, university mentoring programme at the University of Idaho, organised by the institution’s Women’s Centre, were asked to describe their ideal and actual mentoring relationship through metaphor; the responses were analysed qualitatively to explore protégés’ and mentors’ expectations and experiences. Results indicate that protégés held more traditional and hierarchical mentoring ideals at the beginning of the programme and that most mentoring ideals differed from actual experiences. Given this disparity and because metaphorical processes have the capacity to enhance mentoring experiences due to their generative and expansive capacities, we suggest that metaphors be employed in explicit ways to align expectations and realities between mentors’ and protégés’ expectations through shared reflection. We conclude with metaphorical exercises that can be used in formal mentoring programmes in higher education to help participants negotiate expectations and help organise relationships in ways that are aligned with the mission and goals of particular mentoring programmes.

Higher Education and the Negotiated Process of Hegemony Embedded Resistance among Mormon Women

This article examines how 20 female college students who identified as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) negotiated its gender ideology to legitimate their educational goals. The young LDS women creatively employed equality, professionalism, and essentialist discourses to craft a coherent identity as a “good LDS woman” that incorporated their pursuit of higher education. Beyond providing an in-depth look at how college-age LDS women “do gender,” the analysis informs our understanding of the persistence of womens participation in patriarchal religious institutions, the process of womens resistance, and womens role in the negotiated process of hegemony. The authors argue that while women embrace the LDS gender ideology of womanhood, their pursuit of higher education is a form of resistance—embedded resistance—often neglected by scholars. The findings suggest the importance of nomos and meaning in understanding womens participation in and manipulation of patriarchal religious institutions.

‘Keeping it real’ with an emotional curriculum

Students’ emotions can significantly enhance or distract from learning. This paper details a case study of innovative pedagogy in which an ‘emotional curriculum’ was central to my teaching. The analysis of student journals, on-line discussions, and metaphorical exercises revealed a vicissitude of emotions that stemmed from challenging course expectations and group dynamics. Attention to emotions enhanced my ability to address conflicts and to identify the role of affect in the development of students’ academic abilities and identities. Despite the challenges of an ‘emotional curriculum’, I invite others to attend to emotions to enhance the learning and teaching process.

Imagining a Liberal Education Critically Examining the Learning Process Through Simulation

Transformative pedagogy and a learning-centered paradigm are at the heart of a liberal education. In this article, the authors present a case study detailing a simulation they created in an interdisciplinary course in one university’s core curriculum. Although the simulation and the larger course appeared to have engaged the students, after years of socialization to be passive receptacles of information, they seemed to find it difficult to break out of the traditional classroom experience; indeed, they had difficulty even imagining alternative forms of learning. Such resistance suggests the need for more innovative and transformative learning experiences as central components of today’s liberal education. The sharing of ideas and practices to strengthen oppositional teaching cultures is suggested to mitigate the cost of engaging in transformative pedagogy.

“You End Up Feeling Like the Rest of the World Is Kind of Picking on You”: Perceptions of Regulatory Science’s Threats to Economic Livelihoods and Idahoans’ Collective Identity

This article contributes to research on public attitudes toward science, specifically science distrust, by analyzing responses from focus group interviews conducted in the U.S. state of Idaho. Idahoans share a collective cultural identity that values self-sufficiency, independence, and conservative suspicion of government. Content analysis of focus group transcripts from 12 urban and rural communities across Idaho show that regulatory science evokes the highest levels of distrust among participants, as they threaten economic livelihoods and Idahoans’ collective identification with independence and the industries on which Idaho’s economy was built.