An examination of the different ways in which the honors concept has been adapted from its elitist British university origins and of the assumptions underlying those adaptations reveals both the virtues and the problems inherent in the Americanization of honors. (Author/MSE)

Students are motivated to the extent that they initiate and sustain meaningful involvement in learning. Theories of motivation suggest that appropriate attention to college students' needs and expectations for success will enhance their involvement and learning. (Author/MSE)

The research literature suggests that the decade of the '80s is producing a generation of professors coping with surprisingly high levels of job stress. Key reasons include inadequate participation in governance and institutional planning, work overload, low pay, poor working conditions, inadequate recognition, unrealized career expectations, and…

A variety of resources available to assist college faculty in academic advising tasks are listed, including books, professional journals, annotated bibliographies, reports, monographs, conferences, and organizations. Some items are annotated. Addresses are provided for organizations. (MSE)

Explores the characteristics and attitudes of faculty participating in college learning communities, what faculty value about the experience, opportunities for intellectual inquiry offered by the models, issues encountered in teaching in this context, and implications for the future of faculty work. (MSE)

Emerging themes in student assessment include: (1) faculty need to specify skills and knowledge expectations for effective assessment; (2) assessment criteria must be established; (3) there are many ways to assess student learning; and (4) faculty must become more involved in assessment. (MSE)

Self-monitoring is an important part of self-regulated learning. While researchers agree on the overt features of self-monitoring, its psychological dimensions are disputed. Faculty can help college students learn formal, systematic techniques by teaching it in four phases: baseline, structured, independent, and self-regulated self-monitoring. A…

Representation of Chicanos and Latinos in the United States' professoriate is lowest of all racial and ethnic groups when their proportion in the general population is considered. Restriction to limited roles and devaluation of their academic and community contributions maintains this pattern, compounded by institutions' unwillingness to examine…

The steady emergence of small-college honors programs in the early 1970s and the subsequent rapid growth of community college honors programs after 1978 are reviewed. The many successes in these colleges to capitalize on their existing strengths have avoided the problems of larger, university programs. (Author/MSE)

Empirical research on aspects of teaching role performance in which disciplinary differences have been observed (teaching goals, teaching practices, course examination questions, and the relationship between teaching and research) is summarized, and implications for faculty and development, academic affairs administration, and improvement of…

Given the strength of departments, pressures on faculty, and the large number of teaching assistants responsible for undergraduate instruction in research universities, writing instruction often seems to be "in spite of the curriculum." However, it is possible to run successful writing-across-the-curriculum programs in such institutions. (MSE)

A model of classroom characteristics and interaction is used to examine the roles of group size, problem types, and student behaviors, central concerns in problem-based learning, in medical education. The model incorporates six classroom dimensions, including four process variables (classroom organization, learning task, teacher's instruction,…

This article examines the role of social context in teaching and learning at the college level and reviews principles of six research and conceptual approaches which address social context: the transactional perspective; student-centered instruction; cooperative learning; communication theory; group-process theory; and curricular/structural…