A qualitative investigation of instructors’ perceived communicative roles in students’ mental health management

White, Allie; LaBelle, Sara

doi:10.1080/03634523.2019.1571620

Cited by 28 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…When it comes to addressing precarities such as issues with mental health, however, instructors have varying levels of comfort with having these conversations with students. In a study by White and LaBelle (2019), instructors were found to have four approaches, or communicative roles, with such conversations: (a) the empathic listener, who is comfortable with interpersonal discussions of mental health with students and providing emotional support, (b) the referral source, who is comfortable with allowing students to come to them with mental health issues, but is quick to redirect them to professional resources on or off campus, (c) the first responder, who sees their role as a faculty member as being a "first alert" to administration or other offices on campus that can help students in distress, and (d) the bystander, who is not comfortable with any type of role in students' mental health. Although these four roles were identified in the context of mental health, these findings provide an indication of how faculty may feel about approaching the topic(s) of student precarity in their classrooms.…”

Section: Importance Of Instructors In Addressing Student Precaritiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Precarity, citizenship, and the “traditional” student

Bahrainwala

2020

Communication Education

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Precarity, or the condition of continual wage insecurity, is shaping a generation of U.S. college students that suffer continually under poor material conditions, exploitative work schedules, and institutions that do not recognize their precarity. I ground the latter point-that higher education does not recognize the needs of its student precariat-in the argument that such institutions are oriented toward the specter of the traditional student, a concept suffused with citizenship rhetorics. In this paper, I examine the discursive construct of the traditional student, and how it deploys rhetorics of citizenship that deepen exclusions and contribute to student precarity in U.S. higher education. National survey data reveal that college students in the U.S. are experiencing acute precarities on multiple fronts. A startling 60% were food-insecure in 2019, with more students of color, students in 2-year colleges, and LGBTQ+ students reporting food insecurity (AAC&U News, 2019). Over two-thirds of all U.S. students graduate with an average of $30,000 in debt (Dynarski, 2015) at a time when an undergraduate degree has all but become a requirement for an entry-level job. Additionally, a quarter of all university students work full-time to put themselves through college, while 40% work at least 30 h a week (Deruy & National Journal, 2015). Similarly, faculty experience parallel precarities as tenure-track opportunities shrink (Harris, 2019), research expectations balloon (Kafka, 2018), and contingent labor becomes the new majority of faculty labor in the U.S. (Murray, 2019). College students then experience the pressures of faculty contingency secondhand when they are unable to develop relationships or request recommendations from instructors whose labor is stretched across multiple campuses. This carries costs for student learning, which becomes shaped by what McConnell (2019) calls a pedagogy of the transitory, which identifies contingency as a communicative phenomenon and a culturally thick experience that shapes the college learning environment (2019). Students and their faculty imbibe what Rifenburg, Johnston, Ng, and Carney (2019) call the labor casualization of the expanding neoliberal university, which expects faculty and students to labor beyond the classroom through scholarly and civic engagement, public intellectual work, and unpaid internships, with little thought to material compensation and domestic burdens. Given these documented precarities, it is important to ask how institutions discursively orient away from the student precariat and their needs, which in turn reproduces these cycles of precarity. In this essay, I reflect on the notion of the student-citizen to consider

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Section: Importance Of Instructors In Addressing Student Precaritiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Precarity, citizenship, and the “traditional” student

Bahrainwala

2020

Communication Education

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“…In addition, we provide a summary of these strategies ( Table 1 ) and a short list of recommended literature for instructors to read to learn more about these strategies ( Box 1 ). In all these strategies, we recognize that instructors may feel unqualified or uncomfortable addressing such challenges and may be wary of exacerbating mental health concerns ( White and LaBelle, 2019 ). We emphasize that our advice here does not suggest that instructors take the role of mental health professionals; clear boundaries must be established when interacting with students regarding issues of mental health more generally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instructor Strategies to Alleviate Stress and Anxiety among College and University STEM Students

Hsu

Goldsmith

2021

LSE

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“…To organize our review, we focus these strategies into five main categories that span the arc of interacting with a student from the start to the end of a course and beyond: In addition, we provide a summary of these strategies (Table 1) and a short list of recommended literature for instructors to read to learn more about these strategies (Box 1). In all of these strategies, we recognize that instructors may feel unqualified to address such issues, may be wary of worsening mental health concerns (White & LaBelle, 2019), and that instructors will differ in their comfort with addressing these issues. We emphasize that our advice here does not suggest that instructors take the role of mental health professionals; clear boundaries must be established when interacting with students regarding issues of mental health more generally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instructor strategies to alleviate student stress and anxiety in colleges and universities

Hsu¹,

Goldsmith²

2020

Preprint

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While student stress and anxiety are frequently cited as having negative effects on students’ academic performance, the role that instructors can play in mitigating these issues is often underappreciated. We provide summaries of different evidence-based strategies that instructors can employ to address and ameliorate student stress and anxiety that range from changes in instructional strategies to specific classroom interventions. We begin by highlighting ways in which instructors can learn about and prepare to act on issues of stress and anxiety. We then discuss how to better connect with students and build an inclusive, equitable, and empowering classroom environment. When coupled with strategies to change student evaluation and assessment, these approaches can collectively reduce student stress and anxiety, as well as improve student performance. We conclude by discussing the roles that instructors can play in empowering students with skills that improve their time management, studying, and approach towards learning, with an eye towards ensuring their success across all their academic endeavors.

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A qualitative investigation of instructors’ perceived communicative roles in students’ mental health management

Cited by 28 publications

References 50 publications

Precarity, citizenship, and the “traditional” student

Precarity, citizenship, and the “traditional” student

Instructor Strategies to Alleviate Stress and Anxiety among College and University STEM Students

Instructor strategies to alleviate student stress and anxiety in colleges and universities

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