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This autoethnography considers the role of human relationships in the educational process. Approaching learning as a transformational process rooted in human experience and interaction, I explore the central role of emotion in learning relationships. Through an analysis of a learnable moment experienced in a relational communication course on language, I theorize new ways of “doing” learning relationships.

This chapter presents some basic concepts on time studies and discusses what a temporal approach can offer for higher education research. Being an invariable constituent of life, time structures and organizes activities and processes in higher education, covering all of its levels and functions. Furthermore, the current policy agenda that emphasizes the need for higher education to accelerate innovation flows, and to speed up the production of new knowledge and workers, accentuates the importance of the temporal perspective. The chapter examines the dominant, taken-for-granted conception of time – clock time – which involves a linear, quantitative, cumulative, homogenized, abstract and decontextualized conception of time. The core features of clock time are described by the four Cs put forward by Barbara Adam: creation, commodification, colonization and control of time. It is argued that, in the current digital, post-modern era, social acceleration reshapes and transforms the nature of clock time, which results in compression of time, shrinking future and extended present, all manifest in the overall speeding-up of life. In addition, a temporal lens for analysing higher education is presented, with examples from empirical studies on time and temporalities in academic work and identity building.

This chapter investigates how normative beliefs attributed to insecure paid work and care responsibilities affect social understandings of the work–family boundary, and either challenge or reinforce traditional links between gender and moral obligation.

Within an interpretive approach and from a gender perspective, I present a discourse analysis of 41 interviews with Italian parents.

This chapter shows that women in the sample felt forced into blurred boundaries that did not suit their work–family normative beliefs. Men in the sample perceived that they had more boundary control, and they created boundaries that support an innovative fatherhood model. Unlike women, men’s boundaries aligned with their desires.

The specific target of respondents prevents empirical comparisons between social classes. Moreover, the cross-level analysis presented is limited: in particular, further investigation is required at the level of organizational cultures.

The study suggests not only thinking in terms of work–family boundary segmentation and integration but also looking at the normative dimensions which can either enhance or exacerbate perceptions of the work–family interface. The value of the study also stems from its theoretically relevant target.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of women’s experiences of living with and surviving HIV/AIDS. We argue that strong conceptualization of this experience will lead to more efficient health care delivery for this growing population, within the general framework of managed care. Our analytical strategy is to integrate the nursing concept of inner strength with ideas from the sociological concept of the existential self. There are numerous definitions of the increasingly popular concept of inner strength in the health care literature, largely developed through the experiences of women living with breast cancer. In general, this concept is useful because it focuses research attention on patients’ experiences and perceptions of illness. Nevertheless, current definitions can be critiqued for their tendency: (1) view inner strength as a thing-like phenomenon, as if it were like a disease, to be measured, treated and supplemented; (2) describe inner strength in overly metaphoric and romanticized terms that do not reflect the everyday life of living with a serious illness; and (3) assume that inner strength is equivalent to doing well. We argue that this concept can be of greater scholarly and clinical use if it is defined as follows: Inner strength refers to the different ways women with serious illnesses experience and, subsequently, talk about the deepest, existential resources available to and used by them to manage severe threats to body and self. We developed this concept through a series of 19 biographical and conversational interviews with women living with HIV/AIDS. Our interviews found that these women describe their experiences in terms of three types of narratives or stories. Faith stories recount the ways reliance upon a higher power (spiritual or religious) provides a sense of inner strength. Character stories recount the ways women experience inner strength as a resource available to them before as well as during their illness. Uncertainty stories recount the ways women perceive their inner strength as problematic. We conclude with specific suggestions for the application of our revised concept of Inner strength to the role of nursing in the delivery of managed care to women living with HIV/AIDS.

In this paper, we review the literature on learner control and discuss the implications that increased control may have for training in e-learning environments. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the learner control literature, focusing on adults and workplace training. We begin by reviewing the literature on learner control, focusing on the positive and negative effects associated with providing adult learners with control in e-learning environments. We organize our review into instructional design factors that have been manipulated to provide learners with control and person issues that moderate the relation between learner control and outcomes. Then, we summarize developments in training research and in adult learning that relate to learner control in order to provide a theoretical context for understanding learner control in adult workplace e-learning.