Shaping Students' Attitudes Toward Diversity: Do Faculty Practices and Interactions With Students Matter?

Scholars have advocated for further investigation of the campus climate for diversity and students' attitudes and behaviors surrounding diversity, and there appears to be an increasing responsibility for higher education professionals to consider ways to encourage students' awareness and acceptance of difference. Using longitudinal data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, this study examined the relationship between students' perceptions of faculty practices and student-faculty interactions and two measures of students' attitudes toward diversity, and whether these relationships were moderated by race/ethnicity. Findings revealed that several perceptions of faculty practices and student-faculty interactions were positively associated with students' fourth-year diversity attitudes, including: (a) quality of faculty contact; (b) faculty interest in teaching and student development; (c) how often students had discussions with faculty whose political, social, or religious opinions were different from their own; (d) how often faculty engaged students in cooperative learning activities; (e) whether courses helped students see connections between intended careers and how they affect society; and (f) whether courses helped students understand the historical, political, and social connections of past events.

Beyond the four walls: The evolution of school psychological services during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The emergence of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in early 2020 led to the sudden temporary closure of K-12 schools across the United States. Schools were tasked with providing remote instruction to students, and many of these children continued to require mental and behavioral health services provided by school psychologists. In this study, 675 school psychologists were surveyed across the United States to examine how their roles and responsibilities changed as a result of COVID-19.