Stacy L. Young

Assessment of Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Training: A Case Study of a Training Program and Its Impact on GTAs

Graduate teaching associates (GTAs) play a vital role as instructors at many universities but often are not confident in their ability to perform their job-related duties. Based on Banduras (1997) theory of self-efficacy, this project examined a teacher-training program for GTAs and assessed its outcomes. Our results revealed that GTAs reported being more likely to choose prosocial behavioral alternation techniques to manage students after training. They also reported significantly higher self-efficacy across three instructional areas: management, student involvement, and instructional strategies. Finally, GTAs expressed a belief that they could count on more mentoring support than they believed they had prior to training. Only the perceptions of peer support remained unchanged.

Does it make a difference if they hurt you in a funny way? Humorously and non‐humorously phrased hurtful messages in personal relationships

Combining scholarship on hurtful messages with research on humor as a communication strategy, this investigation compared humorously and non‐humorously phrased comments that hurt recipients’ feelings. The topics of hurtful messages, the relationship between recipients and the person who hurt their feelings, as well as recipients’ perceptions about the amount of hurt elicited and about the speakers intentions and feelings were examined. The results indicated that humorous messages used to convey hurtful information were seen as less intentionally hurtful, as expressing less intense feelings across most message topics, and as causing less hurt as compared to non‐humorously phrased comments. These findings suggest that incorporating humor may make hurt‐evoking statements more palatable to recipients than non‐humorously phrased hurtful comments. The implications of this project for future research on hurtful communication and humor usage in personal relationships are discussed.

Positive Perceptions of Hurtful Communication: The Packaging Matters

This project examined two message-specific features—message content and message form—to gain a better understanding of the factors that may facilitate positive perceptions of hurt-evoking comments. Hurtful statements negatively characterizing individuals were viewed as more supportive than hurt-evoking messages that impugned their intelligence or abilities. Similarly, hurtful comments revealing new information or focusing on peoples value as relational partners were seen as displaying more sensitivity than messages that dealt with their abilities and intelligence. People evaluated hurtful messages in the form of advice to be more supportive than directives. Overall, these findings reinforce the important role of language in shaping peoples perceptions of emotion-eliciting communication.

Comparing Romantic Partners' Perceptions of Hurtful Communication During Conflict Conversations

Romantic partners discussed an issue of conflict in their relationship and then a modified stimulated recall methodology was used to examine partners’ perceptions of hurtful messages. Individuals attributed more hurtful statements to their partners than to themselves and interactants often did not agree upon which comments were potentially hurt eliciting. The volume of hurtful statements and the extent to which partners matched when identifying hurtful communication were associated with relational quality—for males only. This study provides a methodological expansion that supports and provides nuance to prior hurtful-message research. It further underscores the importance of gleaning perceptions of hurt from both parties on the same hurt-evoking interaction soon after it occurs.

Emotion in online college classrooms: examining the influence of perceived teacher communication behaviour on students’ emotional experiences

This research focused on teacher communication behaviour as an influential factor in students’ educational experiences. This study examined students’ perceptions of emotion (involving teachers’ emotional support, students’ emotional work and students’ positive emotional valence toward class and teacher) as influenced by a variety of predicting variables: perceptions of teacher affinity-seeking as well as teachers’ positive behaviour alteration techniques, verbal immediacy and teacher online presence (involving the three factors of instructional design, organisation facilitating discourse and direct instruction). Relying on survey data collected from undergraduate and graduate students across disciplines enrolled in course offerings at a large public university, quantitative analysis examined relationships among existing factors previously studied in educational and communication research. Although this study uncovered multiple significant relationships between variables in the data set, students’ perceptions of their teachers’ verbal immediacy and presence in their instructional design were found to be most predictive relative to students’ emotions in online classrooms. Ultimately this project addresses and emphasises the need to more fully examine students’ emotions and related social experiences with virtual teachers and course content in higher education.

Reasons for Student Engagement in Extra-Class Communication

This study extends instructional communication research on extra-class communication (ECC) by presenting an integrative analysis comparing the explanatory utility of student- and instructor-oriented reasons for student engagement in frequent ECC. Results from 495 college students suggested that student-oriented reasons, specifically the relational and functional student motives, were the only significant, positive predictors of students’ perceptions of frequent ECC engagement. Other student motives (excuse making, participation, sycophancy) and perceptions of instructor approachability did not significantly predict perceived frequency of ECC engagement.