Like baseball, community colleges are an American invention. This article employs a baseball metaphor to analyze and to explain success of Latino students in the Los Angeles Community College District. Specifically, a sample of 5,000 students were participants in the Transfer Game, where progress was measured by passing the courses specified by…

Teaching difficulties often require creative approaches. Difficulties are often compounded when students in class show anxiety toward the material presented and, in particular, in the case of quantitative methods--"fear of numbers." This case presented itself in an advanced course in health behavior theory, where teaching the concepts of validity…

System theory, which attests that any change in one component of a system will change other components, is fundamental to the communication discipline. Students are often provided with verbal metaphors (e.g., the machine metaphor) when learning about this theory but many times are not shown its complexity in an engaging manner. Additionally,…

The "good fruit, bad fruit" parable provides a metaphor for sound accountability. If one wants to assess the source of problems to determine quality, then one must look at what has been produced. Unfortunately, many researchers and practitioners have examined the fruit without determining the quality of the tree. This failure has allowed…

In this article, the authors introduce a novel way, using the metaphor of a baseball game, to evaluate and measure community college student progress for those whose stated goal is to transfer to a 4-year institution and, ultimately, earn a bachelor's degree. The proposed framework of "the Transfer Game" is an outgrowth of the Transfer…

"Zooming in" with a camera lens led students in Joan Berger's class to enrich their writing exponentially. Through class discussion of body language, along with the use of worksheets (provided), role-playing, modeling, and conferencing, one aspect of lively writing became a part of their writing repertoire. (Contains 5 figures.)

Purpose: This paper investigates the specialist learning undertaken in graphic design classrooms and its relationship to industry practices. It considers how well students are prepared for work and the nature of this vocational preparation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on an empirical study using a qualitative, case study…

The author introduces an experiential appreciation of organizational culture into a strategic management course. Students were asked to retrieve and to reflect on metaphors, totemic systems, and archetypal imagery associated with their college. Each technique was selected to explore the oblique views of organizational process and dynamics that…

The following paper deals with the importance of genre in academic and professional engineering discourse. The main objective is to explore the use of analogy and metaphor in one specific genre, namely civil engineering research journal articles both in English and in Spanish. Thus, we will start by briefly outlining the use of metaphor in…

In leadership education, developing a tolerance for ambiguity is a key element in preparing students for success in the fast-paced and often chaotic business world. In this article, the author presents an approach that draws on Boyer's framework for scholarship, incorporates experiential education principles, and adopts action research…

This article explores the link between discourse and policy using a discursive web metaphor. It develops the notion of policy as a discursive web based on a post-positivist framework that recognises the way multiple discourses from multiple voices interact in a complex web of power relationships to influence reality. Using Ontario's Access to…

The challenges of intercultural communication are an integral part of many undergraduate business communication courses. Marketing gaffes clearly illustrate the pitfalls of translation and underscore the importance of a knowledge of the culture with which one is attempting to communicate. A good way to approach the topic of translation pitfalls in…

"Sea turtles" refer to scholars who have returned from abroad, and especially from the Western countries while "land turtles" refer to scholars who have been "stuck" in China where they have obtained an education and engaged in theoretical research or practical explorations. In this article, the author compares the…

Concerned about the dehumanization of teachers and students throughout the history of schooling in the United States, the author critically analyzes two metaphors for education that have perennially shaped educational practices in the United States: education is production and education is a cure. Drawing on a set of commitments that could…

Aboard a train heading out of Minneapolis toward frontier North Dakota, Era Bell Thompson in her autobiography "American Daughter" (1946) describes a landscape that grows steadily bleaker with each mile farther west: "Suddenly there was snow--miles and miles of dull, white snow, stretching out to meet the heavy, gray sky; deep banks…