This article examines the rhetoric of the conversion narratives told by a group of women joining a new social sorority on campus. I argue that these sorority conversion narratives are of interest to composition scholars because they document the emotional work involved in entering a community in one's first year of college. My close analysis of…

Background/Context: Research reveals that peer dialogue can contribute to improved cognitive ability and reasoning, increased tolerance for difference, and appreciation for talk as a means of problem solving. When invited to participate in such dialogue, however, not all children do, and often, degrees of engagement reflect demographic patterns.…

This inquiry explores Integral Theory's prospective value to assist interpreting student teachers' communicated awarenesses for how they make sense of their own pedagogies, acknowledging student teachers' partial existence within post-secondary teacher education circumstances along with emerging twenty-first century conditions. Accordingly, this…

Approximately 80% of lean manufacturing program initiatives are abandoned in the first year of implementation. Only 2% of organizations that embark on the lean journey complete it with the results and the sustainability they expected. There is a gap in past research regarding, the leadership strategies organizations can use to overcome resistance…

Family communication about sex can protect adolescents from risky behavior, like early sex and sex without protection. However, adolescents and parents often disagree about whether they talked with each other about sexual issues, limiting the protective effects of communication. Few studies explore these disagreements. This study included 27 pairs…

The aim of this study was to examine the attitudes of headmasters in conflict management process within the school culture. The study has qualitative nature through the interviews with 76 teachers on the leadership and conflict management strategies of the headmasters. Within the framework of action learning and learning organization of a school…

The transition to school can be a complicated process for families of children with exceptionalities (Janus, Lefort, Cameron, & Kopechanski, 2007). Little is known about the transition to school specifically for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). The aim of this study was to examine the communication that occurred among early…

Background & Aims: We evaluated a structured intervention programme aimed at preparing adolescents with developmental language disorders for job interviews. Our primary outcome measures included change in ratings of verbal and non-verbal social communication behaviours evident during mock interviews. Methods & Procedures: In study 1, 12…

University-based academic advising at a large, Great Lakes state institution was designed to support first-year students' transition to college. We conducted individual interviews and facilitated story circles with 162 students to determine their perceived effectiveness of advising. Analyses revealed four overarching themes: student difficulty…

Background: School-centered asthma programs (SAPs) can be an effective intervention to improve asthma control for underserved populations but little is known about how key stakeholders communicate within these programs. Therefore, our aim was to identify key components of effective communication in a SAP. Methods: Primary care providers (PCPs),…

There was a time when community members would talk with one another at the local grocery store, church, or ice cream parlor. However, in today's society, social media such as e-mail blasts and websites, along with blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, and YouTube have replaced communication that was once commonplace in…

This qualitative study reports the concerns of faculty in one food science department as they integrate communication competencies into their classes. The results of the study prioritized self-reports from faculty regarding the challenges they experienced while integrating communication activities into their classes; the nature of the concerns and…

Little research has focused on extended concurrent speech, unexpected floor taking, or topic switching, since it has been deemed rare (Schegloff 2000. "Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation." "Language in Society" 29(1). 1-63.) or inappropriate (Goldberg 1990." Interrupting the discourse on…

This paper documents a case study undertaken to understand the effect of group processes on student evaluation of teaching (SET). The study used interviews to investigate the experiences of students in a cohort model Master of Science in Accountancy degree program and how those experiences influenced SET. The cohort served as an extreme example in…

This study aimed at investigating the preferred refusal strategies in Persian. 3047 refusals collected by 108 field workers as well as 376 refusals collected through face to face interviews were analyzed and classified according to the descriptions proposed by Liao (1994) and Liao and Bresnahan (1996). The frequencies of the resulting direct and…