Rebecca Glazier, Ph.D.
raglazier@ualr.edu
University of Arkansas - Little Rock
I am a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I research religion and politics, US foreign policy, framing, and pedagogy. I am the primary investigator of the Little Rock Congregations Study and a member of the Middle Eastern Studies Faculty at UA Little Rock.
Research Interests
Religion & Politics
Experimental Research
Foreign Policy
Middle East & North African Politics
Political Framing
Religiously-motivated Political Action
Providential Religious Beliefs
Pedagogy
Community Engagement
Congregations
My Research:
I do research in three main areas: religion and politics, framing, and pedagogy. My research on religion asks: how does religion motivate political action? My research in this field has led to the concept of providential beliefs–the belief that God has a plan that people can help bring about.
The work I do on framing asks: how does the way we talk about an issue matter? My research with Amber Boydstun and others focuses on measuring framing (and other agenda control behaviors) and their consequences.
I am a professor and I care deeply about being a good teacher for my students. My pedagogical work asks: how can professors more effectively facilitate learning? My research on teaching and learning focuses on how to engage students in order to improve student success. My research on online teaching and learning demonstrates how building rapport and positive relationships with online students can dramatically improve retention and success.
Once on the fringes of higher education, online learning is now mainstream. Today, there are fewer entirely online or entirely face-to-face students; increasingly, college students are taking courses in a variety of instructional formats. How might this new reality of diverse modalities affect student success? Does a greater or lesser proportion of online classes in a student’s course load lead to different levels of success? And how might these outcomes be conditioned by demographic variables such as age and gender? We explore these questions using data from 761 students in the Political Science Department at the University of Central Florida (UCF), a large public university. Our findings indicate that overall student success varies by the specific mix of course delivery modalities students are enrolled in and is conditioned by demographic variables. For instance, the data show that younger female students tend to do well with any mix of course modalities, but older male students are less successful as they take a greater proportion of their courses online. These results indicate that a changing academic culture regarding online education may not affect all students equally.
Four-year institutions of higher education in the United States are experiencing two major trends: 1. a growing number of transfer students and 2. students taking an increasing proportion of their courses online. Here, we look closely at the extent to which these two trends impact student success. Using the University of Central Florida as our case study, we examine the success of political science majors, taking into account demographics, achievement, transfer status, and the mix of course modalities students take (n = 1,173). Through descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and predicted probabilities, we demonstrate that students are less likely to be successful, as measured by fall-to-fall retention, as they take a greater proportion of their course load online. This decline is particularly dramatic for transfer students. As universities seek to address these two major trends, our data indicate that they need to be particularly sensitive to the combined effects of transfer status and online course modality.
Students studying political science, public administration, public service, and related fields are increasingly expected to engage with local communities in their eventual careers. Providing curriculum-based opportunities for such engagement, however, can be challenging. Are the costs worth the benefits? In 2016, faculty from two universities in Arkansas collaborated on the Little Rock Congregations Study, a research project that brought undergraduate students and graduate students out of the classroom and into the community to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from clergy and congregants across the city. Here, we use qualitative data from assignments and student evaluations, community feedback, and data collection outcomes to evaluate this coordinated effort. We find that teaching through community-based research benefits students, faculty, and the community but is also very resource intensive. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges of this approach and advice for those interested in such an undertaking.
Many religions have an ethos of community betterment that can spur their members to contribute to society in meaningful ways. Yet much of the literature on religion and politics tends to focus on how places of worship increase explicitly partisan activities like voting or donating to a political campaign. Does religion affect community engagement in the same ways that it does political participation? A unique research design executed in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA brings together religious data on individual beliefs and behaviors, clergy messaging, and congregation culture to examine religion’s effects on both political activity and community engagement. The results demonstrate that religion influences both types of behaviors, but not always in the same ways. For instance, it appears as though many congregations tend to develop cultures that encourage either community engagement or political activity, rather than both, with Black Protestant churches as an exception. Additionally, individuals that hold providential religious beliefs tend to have higher levels of community engagement but lower levels of political activity. These findings indicate that religion influences different types of participation differently.
Clergy members are often important political actors. Yet, scholars rarely distinguish among different types of clergy political activities. Here, I argue for three disaggregated categories of clergy political activity: personal, general congregation level, and election-specific congregation level. Data from two sources—the Cooperative Clergy Study and the Little Rock Congregations Study—demonstrate that important differences exist across these categories, with the majority of model variables significantly influencing different clergy political activities in different directions. For instance, a conservative ideology and affiliation with a Black Protestant church both negatively influence personal political activities, like donating to a campaign, while also positively influencing election-related political activities in the congregation, like distributing voter guides. Similarly, providential religious beliefs increase general congregation-level political activities, while decreasing personal and electoral activities. These relationships are obscured when political activity is considered in the aggregate, suggesting that clergy political activities are nuanced; different activities are driven by different motivations.
Although a large amount of scholarly and popular attention has been devoted to understanding the relationship between religion and violence, comparatively less attention has been paid to the relationship between religion and peace. Yet, there are many reasons to believe that religion can be a powerful force for peacemaking. Qualitative research indicates that religious leaders and religious people are often credible peace brokers that are respected in their communities, have ready access to cultural peace-promoting concepts like reconciliation and forgiveness, and may be motivated by non-partisan factors like fulfilling religious obligations or furthering God’s will. Despite this promising research, little large-scale quantitative data has yet been collected from individuals engaged in peacemaking. In this study, the relationship between religion and peacemaking is explored using survey data collected from 171 international peacemakers, the majority of whom are Christian and white. The results indicate that religion influences peacemaking in at least two non-mutually exclusive ways: through motivating religious individuals to participate in peacemaking and through the use of religious tactics by those engaged in peacemaking. Through both means, religion influences commitment to continuing peacemaking, subjective evaluations of success by peacemakers, and hope for success in the future.
Research indicates that religious beliefs can have a major impact on human behavior. Despite the explanatory value of religious beliefs, they are not rigorously studied as often as they could be, because such beliefs tend to be complex, denomination-specific, and difficult to measure. Might non-denomination-specific religious beliefs help inform our understanding of religion’s influence on decision-making? Providentiality—or the belief that God has a plan that humans can help bring about—is potentially such a belief. Orthogonal to religious tradition, providentiality can inform and motivate a variety of behaviors that are of interest to scholars—from the choice to marry to the choice to vote. Data from four different sources—two nationally representative surveys, one large online survey through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and one survey of church-attenders in Little Rock—are presented and analyzed to establish a method for validly measuring providentiality and to provide insight into its potential impact. OLS regression models and correlations present a picture of providential religious believers and their demographic, political, and religious characteristics. The results indicate that providential religious beliefs are found across religious traditions and political divisions. Better understanding individual belief motivation through mechanisms like providentiality can provide additional insight into how religion drives human behavior.
As the prevalence of online education continues to grow, so do concerns about student success. Online students tend to withdraw more often and earn lower grades, compared to students in traditional classrooms. Explanations for this disparity range from student characteristics to institutional shortcomings to course design. Attempts to counter this trend are often resource intensive and yield mixed results. I hypothesize that the difficulty of establishing student– instructor rapport in online classes contributes to lower student success. Without rapport, students are less likely to remember and prioritize online classes. Thus, improving rapport with online students may lead to improvements in student success. To test this hypothesis, I implemented rapport-building teaching strategies—including video updates, personal e-mails, and personalized electronic comments on assignments—in some online classes (student n ¼ 143) and compared student outcomes in those classes to online classes taught without rapport-building strategies (student n ¼ 322). Difference of means tests, logit models, and OLS regression models all show significantly lower attrition and significantly higher grades in the rapport-building courses. Qualitative student comments identify the high-rapport relationship with the instructor as a key factor in student success. Thus, rapport building represents a simple, instructor-driven intervention that can significantly improve online retention and grades.
Past research shows that religious beliefs can shape political activity. Yet current literature leaves open many questions about the mechanisms at work. I point to the key role of a particular religious belief found across denominations: providentiality, or the belief that God has a plan that humans can further. When these beliefs are connected to politics, providential believers are likely to be active and dedicated participators. I test this notion using survey data collected during the 2012 election campaign from congregants in Little Rock, Arkansas. In general, providential believers are less likely than their non-providential counterparts to participate in politics. However, when providential believers report hearing political sermons from their clergy, they are significantly more likely to participate. These findings illustrate one pathway by which religious beliefs can influence politics: through a cue that links providentiality and politics.
Despite recent scholarly and popular work regarding the role of religion in US foreign policy, we still know little about how religious factors affect the public's foreign policy views. This paper proposes one potential mechanism for influence—the connection of providential beliefs to foreign policy issues through a compelling religious frame—and tests the explanatory power of this approach through a nationally administered survey experiment. The “providential” orientation of respondents—the extent to which they believe in a divinely authored plan—is measured through questions that tap the nondenomination specific nature of religious beliefs. A multi-methods approach of means comparisons, logit analyses, and exact logistical regression indicates that when a foreign policy is framed in religious terms, providentiality is a significant predictor of support, even in the face of countervailing political beliefs. These findings highlight one mechanism through which religion can influence foreign policy attitudes, thereby demonstrating the value of further investigating the role of religious beliefs in politics.
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