In this article, the author discusses how to make strategic planning a more valuable tool for higher education in today's tough times. Strategic planning is really the answer to five straightforward questions. The first three represent the plan itself, while the last two are what makes the plan vital and dynamic: (1) Why do we exist?; (2) What do…

Interest regarding the challenge-hindrance occupational stress model has increased in recent years, however its theoretical foundation has not been tested. Drawing from the transactional theory of stress, this study tests the assumptions made in past research (1) that workload and responsibility are appraised as challenges and role ambiguity and…

In this paper I take a positive view of ambiguity in the learning of mathematics. Following Grosholz (2007), I argue that it is not only the arts which exploit ambiguity for creative ends but science and mathematics too. By enabling the juxtaposition of multiple conflicting frames of reference, ambiguity allows novel connections to be made. I…

Many faculty and staff working in higher education lament the increasing involvement of the parents of their college-aged students. They denigrate such individuals as "helicopter" parents, and when the contact occurs in person as opposed to through the phone or email, they call them "lawn mower" parents. The whole issue of…

This article proposes an answer to the primary question of how the American Sign Language (ASL) community in the United States conceptualizes (im)politeness and its related notions. It begins with a review of evolving theoretical issues in research on (im)politeness and related methodological problems with studying (im)politeness in natural…

We describe, discuss and illustrate a metaphoric parallel between the history of the most famous Spanish liqueur, "Anis del Mono" ("Anis" of the Monkey), and the evolution of living organisms in the light of Darwinian theory and other biological hypotheses published subsequent to Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species." Also, we report the use of a…

This article illustrates some of the foundational principles of active engagement/metaphors through the work of the author from the University of British Columbia, Canada. The author's intention is to highlight some of the important concepts underlying active engagement and the use of metaphors in employment counseling. In his work, the author…

The article contributes to the discussion of writing at doctoral level, which has lately been of interest in higher education literature, by approaching doctoral theses "as texts" and by highlighting textuality and rhetoric in doctoral writing, issues which have been marginalised in the discourse to date. In this paper I analyse the use of…

Utilizing an energy-as-substance conceptual metaphor as a central feature of the introductory physics curriculum affords students a wealth of conceptual resources for reasoning about energy conservation, storage, and transfer. This paper first establishes the utility and function of a conceptual metaphor in developing student understanding of…

In this phenomenological study, prospective computer teachers' mental images related to the concepts of "school" and "computer teacher" were examined through metaphors. Participants were all the 45 seniors majoring in the Department of Computer and Instructional Technologies at Selcuk University, Ahmet Kelesoglu Faculty of…

This study examines metaphors about learning produced by a group of eighteen students at a big public university in Malaysia. The learner perspective is placed within a wider discourse on education in order to explore whether the images employed by the learners to describe their learning reflect the dominant conception of education as…

The present article examines the outcomes derived from a task on intensive reading carried out by university students. The main goal is to analyze the frequency of use and the success of idiom solving strategies used by the subjects while reading. Additionally, our interest is to compare the above outcomes and the reading time scores of a group of…

Idiomatic expressions pose substantial learning difficulties for learners across languages and tend to be acquired later in the course of language development both in L1 and L2. A number of factors have been identified as contributing to this difficulty. However, cross-linguistic studies on figurative language acquisition are still rare. The…

The teaching of English grammar to second language learners is usually a tedious, stressful and time consuming activity and even after all the effort, students have generally found these lessons boring and confusing. As such, innovative language instructors have been trying different approaches to the teaching of grammar in their classrooms. Using…

This article explores the perceptions of development through metaphor use by students of International Business Management Studies at The Hague University. Students' reflections upon the concepts of nature and development before and after educational intervention are examined through discourse analysis and narrative analysis. Results show that…