Lilian H. Hill

Academic Incivility among Health Sciences Faculty.

Academic health centers are under pressure to graduate more health professionals and, therefore, must retain talented faculty members who can educate students in respective disciplines. Faculty-to-faculty incivility is especially relevant to academic medical centers because faculty in the health professions must not only meet university tenure and promotion requirements but also, in many cases, maintain their professional licenses. This article describes faculty-to-faculty incivility, how it manifests itself, the consequences of uncivil behaviors, and strategies to combat incivility among faculty. Grounded in a theoretical framework of empowerment, the article concludes with suggested strategies for addressing faculty-to-faculty incivility and implications for practice.

Graduate Students’ Perspectives on Effective Teaching

This study employed data collected over an 8-year period in which graduate students’ perspectives on effective teaching were collected during a class exercise. The data were organized into three categories: (a) teaching competence (knowledge of content and teaching), (b) relationships with students (having the best interests of students at heart), and (c) teacher attitudes (with respect to teaching and learning). Students appear to concur with the literature in adult and higher education that effective teaching involves far more than presenting content and the methods used to convey that content to students. Equally important are the affective or emotional processes involved in learning, forming a relationship with students, and caring about students’ learning and ability to integrate and apply new information. Therefore, adult and higher education courses that address teaching need to go further than merely addressing course design and techniques. Unless students have direct instruction in teaching and an opportunity to practice, they will often uncritically reproduce the teaching models they have experienced. This article can serve as a way to introduce information about effective teaching that emanates from a source with which students can easily identify and serve as a platform to engage students in the study of teaching.

Thoughts for students considering becoming qualitative researchers

This article is intended for use as a class handout to aid students who are learning about qualitative research to determine whether qualitative research is a good fit and whether they have the personal characteristics required to become effective qualitative researchers.

Sources of Diversity in Community Development Practice

This paper focuses on diversity as it exists in community development practice. The authors present the conclusions of a three-year, qualitative study of community development practice conducted in eight countries. Data were collected by visiting each country and interviewing practitioners, observing their work, and photographing community projects. Sources of diversity were found in the characteristics of individuals, groups, the community setting, and the practitioners themselves. Just as the concept of diversity is multi-faceted and complex, diversity in community development was found to have many sources and interacting factors.

Employing Transformative Learning Theory in the Design and Implementation of a Curriculum for Court-Ordered Participants in a Parent Education Class:

This study sought to analyze the experiences of participants in court-ordered parent education with the ultimate goal to identify a framework, which promotes learning that is transformative. Participants included 11 parents court ordered to attend parent education classes through the Department of Human Services. A basic qualitative design, which was comprised of a before-training interview, training, after-training interview, and follow-up interview, was used. Analysis of data, which included transcribed interviews, field notes, journal postings, and observations of parent–child interactions, revealed that most of the participants experienced a transformation of parenting style. Transformation was fostered through self-reflection and rational discourse in the form of journal writings, guided class discussions, and critical questioning. Findings suggest that transformative learning can occur in a mandated setting providing that the incentive is powerful enough and that transformative learning can be lasting in non-life-threatening situations, such as the potential loss of custody of one’s children.

A Storyville Education: Spatial Practices and the Learned Sex Trade in the City That Care Forgot.

Storyville, the legalized red-light district of New Orleans (1897-1917), was a designated space containing informal opportunities for learning in which its residents practiced the sex trade. Although Storyville was created to regulate prostitution, prostitutes and madams learned the city’s legal system, politics, and economics to survive in a socially constructed space. Using primary and secondary sources and informed by theory, including informal learning, spatial production, and critical and feminist geography, this study explores the adult learning that took place in Storyville.

Book Review: Community Education, Lifelong Learning, and Social Inclusion

Marjorie Griffin Cohen show how a community skills training program for immigrants in Toronto works because it is situated within, and run by, the community it serves. It survived by diversifying its funding sources and developing an advocacy role with a voice in government policy discussions. Shauna Butterwick, in a nuanced portrait of an experiential life skills program, deconstructs the meaning of skills and standards. She shows, even for a program dedicated to resisting “hyper-individualist economic rationality and promoting . . . social engagement” (p. 175), how difficult it is to avoid one-sizing, deficit approaches or shaping participants to fit the dominant individualist entrepreneurial ethic. Alice de Wolff and Maureen Hynes analyze contradictions among standards applied to office work skills and the inadequacies of these competency standards in light of the actual complex knowledges enacted by office workers. They recommend strategies for negotiating training approaches, prior learning assessment, worker mobility, and resistance to metastandards. Kate Braid, an award-winning poet and journey carpenter, presents a wry glimpse of survival “etiquette” for women in construction culture. Cohen and Braid narrate a fascinating story of what happened to women and First Nations men who participated in “equity training” for road construction when they were placed with a road crew on Vancouver Island. The chapters’ discussions are neatly framed through an excellent introduction by editor Marjorie Griffin Cohen. She sets forth the issues concisely: labor market dynamics, the politics of equity training for excluded people, and the context in Canada of severe funding cutbacks, federal-provincial handoffs, and the ascendance of neoliberalism. A comprehensive index and useful bibliography complete the book. Although the collection is limited, as all books are, it states its parameters clearly and does not pretend to step outside those boundaries. One particular omission here is in target groups; the chapters focus mostly on women, with no mention of aging workers, workers with disabilities, immigrant men, and other significant groups of excluded workers. A second omission is in the approaches to developing work skills. With total focus here on formal training programs, other promising educative initiatives (work-based guided learning, team learning, job redesign) or supervisor/manager training (e.g., to tackle workplace discrimination and workers’ equitable access to learning opportunities) receive little mention. But in addressing exactly what its title purports to address, this volume is successful. Its case studies transcend the Canadian context in presenting training issues that will be familiar to most Adult Education Quarterly readers, and its lively readability should appeal broadly.