Donna Pawlowski

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Bemidji State University

As a pedagogy, service-learning connects students with the community while focusing on course outcomes. The community becomes a live text for reflection and enriches students’ experiences they otherwise would not have in the classroom. This article provides tips and strategies for implementing service-learning in the classroom. These tips and strat...

Courses: Presentational courses such as Public Speaking, Interviewing, Business and Professional, Persuasion, Interpersonal; any course where civility may be promoted in the classroom. Objectives: At the end of this single-class activity, students will have an understanding of civility in order to: (1) identify civility and consequences of behavior...

In an experiment, children in three grade levels (second, fourth, and sixth) viewed four advertisements. The children were shown advertisements with either metaphors in both pictorial and verbal form or a literal equivalent. The sixth graders interpreted more metaphors correctly than the fourth and second graders. In terms of recall of advertised c...

Goal/Objective: The overall goal is to allow students to discuss their perceptions of sex and sex education, and realize the importance of these issues as a communicative topic within the family; students will identify and articulate their perceptions about, and experiences with, sex education in family communication interactions Courses: This acti...

Objective: Students can reflect upon and articulate how they have been shaped by their ?standpoints? in life. This assignment allows students to truly see themselves reaching out (understanding others) and reaching in (examining selves) to reflect upon their standpoint in society. Secondary goals are to dispel stereotypes of various standpoints and...

We detail the experiences of a department of six faculty members in negotiating spirituality in a Jesuit, Catholic University. Grounding our work in “co-constructed narrative” as a method, we utilize narratives gathered through self-reflection, conversation, and interviews to elucidate how contradictory conditions are created through competing disc...

This paper is a metaphoric analysis that explores college students’ perceptions of their families in relation to their family of origin, concept of family, and family communication. Metaphors were thematically analyzed and placed in categories of positive, negative and neutral responses given by individuals. Constant comparative method was also use...

The purpose of this study was to explore the association of sibling conflict style (i.e., integrative, distributive, avoidant) with perceived relational communication themes (i.e., immediacy, similarity, receptivity, composure, formality, dominance, equality, task orientation). Participants were 186 undergraduate students who reported on a recent c...

Workplace ethics has become an increasingly important topic since the 1960s. Companies emphasize ethical behavior; schools and professional groups devote many resources to applied ethics training. However, very little research has explored the use of pre-employment selection measures to influence organizational ethics. This article describes initia...

This study investigated how organizational peer types (information, collegial, special) differ in the act of communication openness and the use of functional communication skills. Participants were 138 members of various organizations who completed the Communication Openness Measure and the Communication Functions Questionnaire regarding either an...

This study identifies contradictions in married partners’ accounts of their relationship and assesses the importance of the tensions at beginning, middle, and present relational turning points. Overall, autonomy‐connection was the most frequently experienced contradiction, however openness‐closedness was perceived as the most important tension. Whe...

This paper addresses issues of implementing critical thinking in the basic communication course. A new paradigm of critical thinking, which includes a dualistic approach of teaching both the logical and creative skills, must be considered in communication classes in order to meet the needs of the core communication curriculum and mission. As a star...

Workplace ethics has become an increasingly important concern as both large and small companies emphasize ethical behavior, and schools and professional groups devote significant resources to ethics training. Despite the increased attention, very little research has explored the use of pre-employment selection measures to influence organizational e...

Dialectical tensions, defined as opposing forces that people experience in their relationships, are important for relational development. Predictability-novelty, for instance, is an example of a tension manifested by partners simultaneously desiring predictability and spontaneity in their relationships. Past dialectical studies are problematic as t...