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The Classroom as a Negotiated Social Setting: An Empirical Study of the Effects of Faculty
Members' Behavior on Students' Participation
Author(s): Carol J. Auster and Mindy MacRone
Source:
Teaching Sociology,
Vol. 22, No. 4, Interpersonal and Interactional Aspects of Teaching (
Oct., 1994), pp. 289-300
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1318921
Accessed: 06-12-2015 23:55 UTC
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THE CLASSROOM
AS A NEGOTIATED SOCIAL
SETTING:
AN
EMPIRICAL
STUDY OF THE EFFECTS
OF FACULTY
MEMBERS'
BEHAVIOR
ON STUDENTS' PARTICIPATION
CAROL
J. AUSTER MINDY
MACRONE
Franklin
and
Marshall
College Franklin and
Marshall
College
Since we believe that the relationship
between students and teachers is the result of
responses to a negotiated
social setting, we studied the impact
of faculty
members'
interactional
behaviors,
particularly
those indicating
role distance from the powerful
and all-knowing professor, on students' participation.
We examined the effect of
students'
gender on their
perceptions
of male and female
faculty
members'
behavior
in the classroom.
Findings generally
indicated
that
interactional behaviors which
show
students the importance
of their
questions, ideas, and knowledge
promote
student
participation regardless of the student's
gender. Although
female
professors'courses
were more
likely
to be those in which students
participated
the most, the findings
also
showed that
participation
was not affected
by gender per se, but rather
by how often
the faculty
member engaged in the behavior with the respondent. Consequently
faculty
should often: 1) call on students when they volunteer,
and call on them by
name;
2) provide
positive
reinforcement
in the form of encouragement
and approval;
3) ask analytical
(not factual
questions)
and provide
students ample time to answer;
and 4) ask for
students'
opinions even when they do not volunteer.
The discussion
section further
elaborates on the
implications
of the findings
for
teaching
and for future
studies on this topic.
IN THE LAST TWO DECADES,
MANY
ARTICLES
have focused on the role of students'
par-
ticipation in the learning process.
While
some
writers lament
that student
participa-
tion is waning, others
point to the impor-
tance
of engaging
students
in active
learn-
ing and offer
strategies
for increasing
their
involvement in the classroom (Barnes
1979; Billson 1986; Browne and Litwin
1987; Gimenez 1989; Hamlin and
Janssen
1987; Holtz 1989; Rau and Heyl 1990;
Wright
1989;
Wright
and
Kane
1991). De-
spite this extensive
literature,
however,
we
have surprisingly
little systematically
col-
lected empirical
data on the impact
of fac-
ulty members'
behavior
on students'
par-
ticipation;
many
of the strategies
suggested
for increasing
students' participation
are
based
only on anecdotal
evidence.
In this
paper
we examine
empirically
the effects of
professors'
behavior
in the classroom
on the
level of students' participation
and also
look at similarities
and
differences
between
female
and male
faculty
members.
We also
explore
several
other
factors
that
may
affect
the level
of student
participation,
including
the student's gender.
BACKGROUND
Although an increasing number of faculty
members believe that participation is very
important for students, the definition of
student participation is somewhat elusive.
For most faculty members, class participa-
tion consists of asking and answering ques-
tions, and participating in discussions or
debate, but it is much more difficult to
operationalize the quality of participation
and its subsequent value to the student
participant. If the predominant goal of par-
ticipation is to engage students in the intel-
lectual materials-to allow them to meet
the ideas on their own terms-then the
effect of the participation does not matter
for anyone but the student who is partici-
pating. Because of the difficulties associ-
ated with defining and then measuring the
self-reported quality of students' participa-
tion, we have limited this study to an ex-
amination of the factors that enhance the
quantity of participation. Nevertheless, we
assume that where the quantity of partici-
pation is high, it is more likely that the
quality, however it is defined, also might be
Teaching
Sociology,
1994, Vol. 22 (October: 289-300) 289
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290 TEACHING SOCIOLOGY
enhanced as a student asks and responds to
questions and tries out new ideas.
One difficulty with a quantitative
defini-
tion is that students may differ both in their
motivations to participate in the classroom
and in the strategies they use to communi-
cate. These strategies, in turn, may affect
even the quantity of participation.
A number
of studies, mostly observational,
have shown
that men are more likely than women to
participate in class (French 1984; Graddol
and Swann 1989; Hall and Sandler 1982;
Karp and Yoels 1976; O'Keefe and Fampel
1987; Spender 1981; Sternglanz
and Lyber-
ger-Ficek 1977).
A number of explanations that focus on
differences between women's and men's
communication styles help to interpret
these
findings. Some observers describe our edu-
cational system as masculine because intel-
lectual exchange occurs as a public display,
followed by argument and challenge (Hall
and Sandler
1982). Men may be comfortable
with this type of environment, but many
women would rather not break their class-
mates' consensus and choose instead to re-
main silent. This point seems consistent with
Tannen's (1990) argument that men and
women differ fundamentally in their use of
language: men are more likely to use lan-
guage to gain power,
while women are
more
likely to use it to gain intimacy.
Women also
offer more positive reinforcement than men
to keep the conversation going in mixed-sex
groups (DeVault 1990; Fishman 1978; West
1988; West and Zimmerman 1977). Nu-
merous studies also have pointed to women's
use of tag questions; such questions may be
precisely the cues a student listener needs as
encouragement to move from the role of
potential participant to that of participant.
Tannen (1990) also notes that women pro-
vide more listener noise, such as "mm-mm"
and "uh-huh".
The listener noise provided
by a faculty member may encourage the
already participating student to elaborate
further on his or her ideas.
In short, empirical studies have noted
that women's and men's
verbal and nonver-
bal communication typically differ in both
content and style. Although women's com-
munication style is often devalued in the
public sphere,
some studies have found more
discussion
and participation
in classes
taught
by women (Brooks 1982; Constantinople,
Cornelius, and Gray 1988; Crawford and
MacLeod 1990). Women's typical commu-
nication style, however,
may encourage stu-
dents to participate
in the classroom,
regard-
less of the faculty
member's
gender (Hall and
Sandler 1982).
Role theory offers a logical explanation
for this possibility. The Lintonian model
(Linton 1936:113-15) distinguishes be-
tween status and role. Whereas the status of
being a teacher or a student in the classroom
defines one's
position in that particular
social
system, it is the role-the expected behavior
of each party-that brings insight here. By
virtue of their status, teachers have more
power than students over a variety
of aspects
of the class,
including the syllabus,
materials
discussed in class, methods of evaluation,
and students' grades. Students may feel un-
important in the creation and sharing of
knowledge because of the hierarchical rela-
tionship and the implied power imbalance;
the imbalance often is reinforced by high
school experiences.
Evidence from case stud-
ies of employees' participation shows that
they believe most strongly
in the importance
of their
views when they have been accorded
a formal
place
in the governance
of the work-
place (Zwerdling 1980). Yet the normative
expectations about the power imbalance be-
tween teachers and students may cause stu-
dents to believe that their role is to be the
passive recipient of the teacher's
knowledge;
the lecture format only reinforces this ex-
pected role.
Despite normative expectations, roles
in an actual social relationship are negoti-
ated as each party responds to the role
performance of the other (Goffman
1961:85). Karp and Yoels point out that
"students and teachers formulate defini-
tions of the classroom as a social setting"
(1975:423). Goffman's classic example of
the surgeon (1961:115-32) illustrates that
the surgical team works most effectively
when the surgeon engages in role distance
by not exploiting his or her full range of
power over the other members of the surgi-
cal team. Likewise, the teacher
who engages
in role distance from the traditional defini-
tion of powerful and all-knowing scholar
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THE CLASSROOM
AS A NEGOTIATED
SOCIAL
SETTING 291
and instead assures students of the impor-
tance of their questions and ideas creates a
social setting that would seem to encourage
participation. Several sociologists under-
score the importance of teaching so as to
create a social structure that emphasizes
and enhances the student's role in creating
knowledge (Hamlin and Janssen 1987;
Karp and Yoels 1976; Wright 1989). Al-
though female students may be disadvan-
taged by using the women's style of every-
day conversation in the classroom, teachers
who employ this style may display the role
distance that encourages students' efficacy
and participation because the style also is
associated with groups lacking power (Fish-
man 1978; Hall and Sandler 1982; Lakoff
1975, 1990). Although Johnson (1994)
found that authority predicted conversa-
tional patterns more accurately than gen-
der,
we believe that the autonomy and flexi-
bility of the college teacher's role allows
gender to have a greater effect.
Despite the apparent differences be-
tween female and male students' participa-
tion, previous survey research
on classroom
interaction and participation appears prob-
lematic because researchers employed one
of two different methods. Some researchers
asked students to respond to questions in a
general sense (for example, see Heller, Puff,
and Mills 1985), typically prefacing each
question by "In general..." or "In
your over-
all college experience...." We did not want
to ask students broad questions about their
overall college experience because we were
interested in discovering why participation
varies from one class to another, not why
one student participates more or less than
another. Other researchers used a method
that was too class-specific in that questions
about a specific class were asked while the
student was sitting in that class (Boersma et
al. 1981; Crawford and MacLeod 1990;
Karp and Yoels 1976). Moreover, the stu-
dents may have been affected by respond-
ing while they were in the classroom; stu-
dents who might have rated the classroom
very low on personal interaction might not
have been included in the survey because
they were less likely to come to class; or
perceptions of the class might have been
affected unduly by recent feedback from
the professor. Still other researchers meas-
ured students' satisfaction, grades, net-
works, or critical thinking skills (Hamlin
and Janssen 1987; Rau and Heyl 1990;
Shepelak, Curry-Jackson, and Moore
1992; Wilson and Reiser 1982) rather
than
participation. In short, the methodological
shortcomings of previous studies pointed
to the need for a new method of question-
ing students about the effect of faculty be-
havior on their participation.
METHODOLOGY
In the fall of 1992, students in our research
methods course constructed a questionnaire
on various
aspects
of social
and academic
life.
In the section on academic
life, we included
questions allowing us to explore factors that
might affect class
participation.
Because this
research
was conducted in a research
methods
class,
we made some methodological choices
on the basis
of their perceived
value to learn-
ing. For example, we asked students to con-
struct
predominantly
closed-ended
questions
for their survey instrument. Although the
resulting questionnaire
could have been self-
administered,
the students were required
to
conduct face-to-face interviews, using the
questionnaire, in order to have that experi-
ence. A systematic random sample of 132
students was taken from the approximately
1,800 enrolled at this private
liberal
arts col-
lege. Each of the 22 students in the research
methods class then was assigned
to interview
six respondents.
To overcome the methodological diffi-
culties described earlier,
we tried a unique
approach. First, we asked respondents to
think of the class in which they participated
most in the current semester and to answer
questions concerning that class. Then we
asked respondents to think of the class in
which they participated
least during the cur-
rent semester and to answer the same ques-
tions. Obviously, the courses chosen by the
student are those in which they perceive
that
they are
participating
the most and the least;
we have no independent measures of
whether these were actually the courses in
which they did so. For example, their per-
ception of themselves may have been influ-
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292 TEACHING SOCIOLOGY
enced by the level of participation by the
other students in the class. Thus, our study
consists of studerts' reports
on the courses in
which they believe they participated most
and least. Although restricting
the questions
to the current semester limited the number
of courses from which students could
choose, we believed that asking only about
courses they were taking in that semester
would increase the reliability of their re-
sponses about faculty members' behavior in
those classes.
We used a variety of measures of the
interactional aspects of the class. Respon-
dents were asked about the frequency with
which the faculty member engaged in such
behaviors as calling on the student when he
or she volunteered; calling on the student by
name; nodding, smiling, and generally
com-
municating interest in what the student said;
encouraging the student to elaborate on his
or her answers;
and giving the student rea-
sonable time to answer a question before
going on to another student. These ques-
tions were variations on some questions used
by Heller
et al. (1985), who developed
their
questions from Hall and Sandler's
(1982) list
of behaviors that may enhance or inhibit
women's participation. For this study, we
developed three additional questions about
the following behaviors:
asking factual
ques-
tions; asking questions which are analytical,
such as applying concepts that the student
had learned;
and calling on the student when
he or she has not volunteered.
All of the questions were asked in the
following form: "How often does the profes-
sor call on you by name?" or "How often
does the professor encourage you to elabo-
rate on answers you have given?"
We used
you (e.g., "call
on you by name") to increase
the reliability
of responses.
We thought that
respondents would remember more clearly
what had happened to them than to other
members of the class. The possible responses
to these questions about behavior were
"often,"
"sometimes,"
"rarely,"
and "never."
Although the chi-squares
reported
in the
data analysis section are calculated on the
basis of all four responses,
we chose to focus
on the percentage of students responding
"often." We believed that if faculty members'
interactional behavior reflects their percep-
tion of the role expected of students, then
they send the clearest message when they
engage in particular
behaviors
with notice-
able regularity-that is, often. We did not
use a measure of central tendency because
the mean and the median could have repre-
sented quite different arrays
of responses.
We recognize that because we have no
independent observations of the faculty
members' behavior, the reported frequency
with which faculty members engaged in
these behaviors is based only on the respon-
dents' perception and reporting of such be-
haviors. The possible discrepancy between
students'
perception of faculty
members' be-
havior and faculty members'
actual behavior
also has been acknowledged by those inter-
ested in the evaluation of teaching effective-
ness (Centra 1979; McKeachie 1979;
Scheetz 1986; Seldin 1984).
We hypothesized that the presence of
each behavior would indicate distance from
the traditional role and would result in the
creation of the classroom as a social setting,
which would encourage
students' participa-
tion. These behaviors
presumably
would in-
crease
students'
efficacy
by showing them the
importance of their questions, ideas, and
knowledge. For example, giving a student
time to answer before calling on another
student and encouraging elaboration would
show the student the importance of his or
her response, particularly because the
teacher,
in the process
of doing this, is giving
up his or her own time to talk.
We believed that questions about the
different behaviors by faculty members
would provide insight into the role of the
interactional aspects of teaching in shaping
students' participation, but we recognized
that other factors might also play a role.
Because much of the literature on commu-
nication addresses gender issues, we will
carefully examine the relationship of both
the professor's
gender and the student's
gen-
der to class participation.
RESULTS
FACULTY
MEMBERS'
BEHAVIOR
With the above hypotheses in mind, we first
compared the behavior of professors in
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THE CLASSROOM AS A NEGOTIATED SOCIAL SETTING 293
Table 1. Faculty Members' Behavior in the Classes in Which Students Participate
Most and
Least, Percentages Reporting "Often"
Students' Level of Participation
Faculty
Behavior Most Least Significance
Calls
on When
Student Volunteers 86.7 41.9 .001
Calls
On by Name 86.7 36.7 .001
Shows Signs of Approval/Interest 69.3 33.3 .001
Encourages
Elaboration 58.7 21.9 .001
Gives Enough
Time to Answer 81.3 49.5 .001
Asks Factual
Questions 54.7 47.5 ns
Asks Analytic
Questions 78.7 36.7 .001
Calls
On When Student Does Not 14.7 3.1 .001
Volunteer
classes in which students said they partici-
pated the most (hereafter
called MOST)
with
the behavior
of professors
in classes in which
students said they participated the least
(hereafter
called LEAST).
We hoped that we
would be able to characterize
the behavior of
faculty members in the classes in which stu-
dents participated most. In the three tables
provided here, which describe the charac-
teristics of the MOST
and the LEAST
courses,
the findings are based on the approximately
260 courses (130 MOST and 130 LEAST)
mentioned by the 130 respondents.
Table 1 shows that for seven
of eight meas-
ures of faculty behavior,
a significantly larger
percentage of students reported that faculty
members engaged often
in these behaviors
in
the MOST
class than in the LEAST class. For
example, about 85 percent of students re-
ported that the professor
called on them often
when they volunteered and called
on them by
name in the MOST
course; only about 40
percent reported that the professor engaged
often in these behaviors
in the LEAST
course.
The only measure
that was not significant
was
"asking
factual
questions."
Effects
of the professor's gender. We then
examined the impact of faculty member's
gender on participation. Of the classes men-
tioned, courses taught by men were some-
what more likely to be mentioned as LEAST
(56.9%) than as
MOST
(43.1%). Conversely,
women's courses were much more likely to
be mentioned as MOST (65.4%) than as
LEAST
(34.6%). The differences between
courses taught by women and by men were
significant (x2=11.02, df=
1, p<.001). Inter-
estingly, the female students' response was
nearly identical to the male students' re-
sponse. What quality in women professors'
classes enhances participation?
Is it simply
their gender,
or is it their behavior and inter-
action with students?
Next we examined
the frequency
of inter-
actional behaviors in the respondents'
MOST
class by the gender of the faculty member
teaching
the class. For seven of the eight meas-
ures, we found no significant differences in
the reported behavior of male and female
professors
for the MOST
course.
The exception
was that men (78.7%) were significantly
(2
= 12.96, df=3, p<.005) more likely than
women (52.8%) to be reported
as often asking
analytic questions. Then we looked at the
differences
between female and male faculty
members for the LEAST
course. For six out of
eight variables,
we found no significant
differ-
ences between women and men. On the other
hand, women (64.3%) were significantly
(2=9.51, df=3, p<.03) more likely than men
(36.7%) to be reported as often calling on
students by name and encouraging
them to
elaborate on answers (x2=11.95, df=3,
p<.008), even in the LEAST class. Also, for
several other variables such as showing signs
of approval,
for
which the differences
were
not
significant,
a
larger
percentage
of respondents
reported
that
women (57.1%) engaged
much
more often in the behavior than men
(33.3%). Thus, although behavior charac-
terizing
the class
in which students
participate
MOST appears to be evident, women fre-
quently are described as engaging often in
some of these behaviors
even in a course in
which a student reports
that he or she partici-
pated least.
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294 TEACHING
SOCIOLOGY
Table 2. A Comparison of Faculty Behavior in MOST and in LEAST
Courses, Controlling
for
Faculty Member's Gender, Percentages Reporting "Often"
Men Women
Faculty
Behavior Most Least Significance Most Least Significance
Calls On
When Student 85.3 41.9 .001 81.1 46.4 .004
Volunteers
Calls On by Name 86.7 36.7 .001 79.2 64.3 ns
Shows Signs of Approval/ 69.3 33.3 .001 71.7 57.1 ns
Interest
Encourages
Elaboration 58.7 21.9 .001 58.5 53.6 ns
Gives Enough
Time to 81.3 49.5 .001 92.5 53.8 .001
Answer
Asks Factual
Questions 54.7 47.5 ns 50.0 67.9 ns
Asks Analytic
Questions 78.7 36.7 .001 52.8 51.1 ns
Calls On When
Student 14.7 3.1 .001 15.1 3.6 .03
Does Not Volunteer
We also wanted to test for significant
differences between the MOST and the
LEAST course for each gender. That is, we
wondered whether male faculty members'
behavior was reported
to be similar
or differ-
ent for the students' reported MOST and
LEAST
courses;
we wondered the same about
females. The comparison of the behavior of
male professors
in the MOST
and the LEAST
courses shows significant differences for
seven of the eight measures
(see
Table
2). Not
surprisingly,
a greater percentage
of students
reported that male professors engaged often
in the behaviors thought to encourage par-
ticipation in the MOST
course than in the
LEAST
course.
The only exception was asking
factual questions. The comparison of
women faculty yielded somewhat different
results. As in the case of the men, students
were significantly more likely to report that
women called on students when they volun-
teered,
gave students enough time to answer,
and called on students when they did not
volunteer more often in the MOST course
than in the LEAST course. Also, as with the
men, we found no significant differences
between the frequencies
with which women
faculty asked factual questions in the MOST
and the LEAST
courses. Unlike the findings
for the men, there were some differences on
the four remaining measures, but these dif-
ferences were not significant. For example,
the percentages of students reporting that
women often encouraged students to elabo-
rate on their answers were nearly equal in the
MOST and the LEAST
classes.
In summary,
the results suggest that the
faculty member's gender per se does not
matter,
but rather that certain behaviors en-
courage participation, regardless
of who is
engaging in those behaviors. Nevertheless,
female faculty
members are
perceived
as con-
tinuing to engage often, in both the MOST
and the LEAST
courses,
in some of the behav-
iors that we hypothesized encouraged par-
ticipation.
CHARACTERISTICS
OF
STUDENTS
Effect
ofstudent gender
on the level
ofpartici-
pation and comfort.
Although the above dis-
cussion has focused on specific faculty be-
haviors in the classroom, some variation in
students' behavior may be due to charac-
teristics of students, such as gender or year
in college. In addition to the eight measures
of faculty
behavior
discussed
above,
students
were asked two questions without regard
to
a specific class: 1) "On the average, how
frequently
do you actively participate
by ask-
ing questions or offering comments in
class?"
The possible responses
were "often,"
"sometimes,"
"rarely,"
and "never." For the
purposes of analysis,
we combined the three
latter responses so that we could focus on
"often," the most frequent behavior. Stu-
dents also were asked, "In general, how do
you feel about making contributions in
class?" The possible responses were "very
comfortable," "somewhat comfortable,"
"somewhat uncomfortable," and "very un-
comfortable."
Here, we combined the latter
three responses because only eight men re-
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THE CLASSROOM AS A NEGOTIATED SOCIAL SETTING 295
Table 3. Perceptions of Faculty Behavior in MOST and in LEAST
Courses, Student's Gender,
Percentages Reporting "Often"
Men Women
Faculty
Behavior Most Least Significance Most Least Significance
Calls
On When
Student 85.2 44.8 .001 82.6 41.5 .001
Volunteers
Calls
On by Name 78.7 39.0 .001 88.4 44.9 .001
Shows Signs of Approval/ 62.3 37.3 .03 76.8 40.3 .001
Interest
Encourages
Elaboration 59.0 27.1 .001 58.0 32.8 .001
Gives Enough
Time
to 86.9 49.2 .001 85.5 53.0 .001
Answer
Asks Factual
Questions 54.1 50.0 ns 50.0 53.6 ns
Asks Analytic
Questions 73.8 45.8 .001 63.8 37.7 .007
Calls
On When Student 8.2 3.4 .002 20.3 2.9 .001
Does Not Volunteer
sponded in the two "uncomfortable"
catego-
ries. This particular
recoding also allowed us
to compare those who were most comfort-
able with those who were less comfortable.
Male students (58.1%) were
significantly
(x2=6.26, df=1, p<.05) more likely than fe-
male students (36.3%) to report participat-
ing often in class. This pattern persisted
when we controlled for college year, even
though the differences between women and
men were not significant. Although partici-
pation generally increased somewhat from
the first year to the senior year, the differ-
ences for men and for women were not
significant.
One factor that may affect participation
is the extent to which the student feels com-
fortable in class. For both men and women,
the degree of comfort had a significant im-
pact on the level of participation. Not sur-
prisingly,
students who felt very
comfortable
making contributions in class were signifi-
cantly more likely to participate often than
those who were less than very comfortable.
We then examined the level of comfort by
gender.
As with participation, men (46.8%)
were significantly (x2=9.18, df=l
1, p<.005)
more likely than women (21.7%) to feel very
comfortable. In addition, the percentages
of
both men and women reporting that they
felt very comfortable making contributions
increased
with college year.
Although differ-
ences by college year
were not significant for
men, they were so for women. For the first
three years
of college, men were much more
likely than women to be very comfortable
making contributions in class, but only the
difference between junior men and junior
women was significant. Finally, by the senior
year, women and men were nearly equally
likely to report feeling very comfortable
making contributions in class.
Effect
of students'gender
on
perceptions
of
faculty members'behavior.
In our study, male
students reported participating more and
feeling more comfortable than female stu-
dents. As a result of these findings, we won-
dered whether women and men made simi-
lar or different reports of faculty members'
behavior in the courses in which they par-
ticipated most and least. Because much has
been written about women's and men's dif-
ferent styles and the classroom climate, we
wondered whether the faculty behavior that
promotes students' participation would be
different for female and male students.
First we examined students' reporting of
faculty behavior in their MOST
and LEAST
courses by student's gender. In the MOST
class, we found no significant differences
between men and women for seven of eight
variables. This result would suggest that fe-
male and male students respond
similarly
to
faculty members' interactional attempts to
increase participation.
Yet, even though the
differences were not significant, the women
indicated more often than the men that for
the MOST
course, faculty members called on
them by name and showed signs of interest
and approval. On the other hand, men re-
ported more often that faculty members
asked analytical questions. These findings,
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296 TEACHING
SOCIOLOGY
however, could reflect selective perception
rather than a difference in reality.
Are female
students more sensitive to the personal
feed-
back and the cues of professors attempting
to increase participation, or did faculty
members actually engage in these behaviors
more often with women than with men?
Likewise, did faculty members ask male stu-
dents analytical
questions more often, or are
male students more sharply attuned to such
requests
for participation?
In addition, 20.3
percent of the women (x2=12.47, df=3,
p<.006) reported that the faculty members
in the MOST course called on them when
they had not volunteered; this was true for
only 8.2 percent of the men. On the other
hand, for the LEAST
class, we found no sig-
nificant differences between the responses
of
female and male students.
Table 3 shows differences between the
MOST
and the LEAST class by the student's
gender so that within-gender differences
could be tested. The frequency with which
professors
ask factual questions was not sig-
nificant for
either female
or male students. On
the other hand, for students of both genders,
we found significant differences
between the
MOST
and the LEAST class for the other seven
variables.
In each case, the pattern was the
same: The percentage of students reporting
that faculty members engaged often in these
behaviors was higher for the MOST
class. This
finding reinforces the notion that with the
exception of asking factual questions, the
other behaviors promote class participation
regardless
of the student's
gender.
EFFECT
OF CLASS
SIZE ON PERCEIVED BE-
HAVIOR
BY FACULTY MEMBERS
Crawford and MacLeod (1990) found that
smaller classes were more participatory
than
larger classes. Although our range of class
sizes was small (10 or fewer students to 40 or
more), MOST classes were significantly
(x=36.8, df=4, p<.001) more likely than
LEAST classes to be small. For example, 87.0
percent of classes with ten or fewer students
were designated as the MOST course, in con-
trast to only 33.3 percent of classes with
more than 40 students. If small classes are
more likely to be designated as a MOST
course, what quality in the larger classes
causes some of them also to be named as a
MOST
course? We then hypothesized that
even in larger classes, faculty members en-
gage often in the eight behaviors that appear
to increase
participation. The differences in
reported faculty behavior by the size of the
class were not significant for the MOST
course. This finding suggests
either that pro-
fessors
teaching the large
MOST
courses were
nearly as likely as professors teaching the
small MOST
courses to engage in these be-
haviors, or that the range of variation for
class size was too small to produce differ-
ences. Nevertheless, faculty members teach-
ing the large MOST courses (40 or more
students) were more likely than those teach-
ing the small MOST
courses to call on stu-
dents when they had not volunteered. This
point suggests that some teachers
with large
classes
use this strategy
in an effort to induce
students to participate.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Faculty members point to the importance
of students' participation in class as a way
of engaging them in both the subject mat-
ter and the intellectual ideas associated
with the course. They also believe that the
process of learning how to think critically
and express
ideas has lasting importance for
students' intellectual and personal growth.
Yet with the exception of the literature on
sexual harassment and the "chilly climate"
for women, few empirically sound studies
have been conducted to examine how spe-
cific behaviors by faculty members affect
the level of students' participation. The
sheer quantity of participation does not
guarantee the desired
outcomes in the qual-
ity of thinking and communicating. As the
quantity of participation increases, how-
ever, the chances that a student will be
comfortable in making additional contri-
butions should increase. In view of the
strong link between comfort in making
contributions and the level of participation
found in this study, greater comfort may
increase the student's willingness to try out
new ideas and take intellectual risks.
Although many aspects of the commu-
nication style typically associated with
women (such as listener noise and positive
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THE CLASSROOM
AS A NEGOTIATED SOCIAL
SETTING 297
reinforcement to keep a conversation go-
ing) have been devalued in the public
sphere, classroom behaviors that paralleled
these aspects elicited more participation.
These behaviors also may show a role dis-
tance from the teacher's power; such role
distance could create a social setting that
enhances student participation. By com-
paring reported faculty behavior in the
MOST classes with that in the LEAST
classes,
we gained insight into the type of classroom
climate that is conducive to participation.
Students' participation could be enhanced
if faculty members would often 1) call on
students when they volunteer, and call
them by name; 2) provide positive rein-
forcement in the form of encouragement
and approval;
3) ask analytical (not factual)
questions and provide students ample time
to answer;
and 4) ask for students' opinions
even when they do not volunteer. In the
LEAST
course, faculty members reportedly
engaged in these behaviors; in the MOST
course, however, a much greater percentage
of students reported that faculty engaged
often in these behaviors. This finding rein-
forces the notion that faculty members
must engage in these behaviors regularly,
not only on occasion. Regularly engaging
in these behaviors helps students under-
stand more clearly their expected role in
this negotiated social setting. In addition,
because asking factual questions only rein-
forces the notion of the teacher as all-know-
ing and is least likely to elicit the critical
thinking that faculty members desire, it is
not surprising that asking factual questions
would be the one measure which did not
produce significant differences.
Because so much of the literature on
communication has focused on differences
between women and men, we wondered
whether the professor's gender influenced
participation. The literature suggests that
women typically engage in many subtle and
not-so-subtle behaviors which call for a re-
sponse by the listener. Possibly these same
behaviors also increase students' participa-
tion in the classroom. Although female pro-
fessors' courses were more likely than male
professors'
courses to be designated as
MOST,
controlling for the faculty member's
gender
showed that participation was affected not
by gender per se, but rather
by how often the
faculty member reportedly engaged in the
behavior with the respondent. Because
women also engaged frequently in some of
these behaviors in the LEAST
courses, it be-
comes more difficult to identify the behavior
of women faculty members which distin-
guishes a MOST course from a LEAST
course.
For male faculty,
engaging in behaviors that
parallel women's typical communication
patterns increases students' participation.
Perhaps
women faculty
not only should con-
tinue engaging in "feminine"
behaviors,
but
also should engage more often in interac-
tional behavior typically associated with
male faculty,
such as asking analytical ques-
tions. The suggestions for men and women
faculty presume that the students' reporting
of the frequency of these behaviors repre-
sents real
differences,
not merely differences
in perceptions
colored by stereotyped
gender
expectations of faculty members.
Despite the gender differences between
women's and men's
communication styles as
described in the literature,
male and female
students apparently respond positively and
similarly to these interactional behaviors by
faculty
members.
The only significant
differ-
ence was that women reported being called
on more often when they did not volunteer.
Faculty members may be sensitive to
women's greater silence in the classroom;
suspecting that these silent women have
ideas to contribute, faculty members may
take the chance of calling
on them to encour-
age their participation.
Although we presumed
that the degree
of
comfort affects participation, we cannot be
sure of the direction of the relationship be-
tween comfort and participation.
It also may
be that students become more comfortable
making contributions as they participate
more. In either case, women students' lower
levels of comfort and participation suggest
that the classroom climate may be less con-
ducive to women's
participation.
During lec-
tures or debates, students may be expected
to attack readings or refute the opinions of
others. If Tannen (1991) is right, this situ-
ation may appeal to male students because
of their focus on power, but not appeal to
female students because of their focus on
intimacy and connection. Moreover, stu-
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298 TEACHING
SOCIOLOGY
dents of either gender who are not inclined
to assert themselves may not feel comfort-
able participating. To create a classroom en-
vironment that is more conducive to partici-
pation by all
students, faculty members
must
work on methods that downplay faculty
power and encourage cooperation. This for-
mat is popular in many seminar classes, in
which learning
is a dynamic process
whereby
students are free
to discuss new ideas, receive
feedback from one another and the faculty
member, and build new ideas together.
Findings
by college year
showed that both
participation and comfort increased with
years
in college. Possibly
these findings reflect
the kinds of courses first- and second-year
students
take,
namely
larger
courses needed to
fill distribution requirements. Nevertheless,
strategies
that enhance comfort and increase
participation
early
in a student's
college career
may increase
comfort further;
as a result,
stu-
dents should participate more throughout
their college careers.
Certainly, instituting a
required
seminar
for
first-year
students should
provide
the intensive
interactions
with faculty
members and other students
that
will encour-
age future participation
outside that particu-
lar
seminar.
Many educators have pointed to col-
laborative learning groups as another way
to increase students' participation (McKin-
ney and Graham-Buxton 1993; Petonito
1991; Rau and Heyl 1990). Although the
student does not necessarily receive indi-
vidual encouragement and feedback from
the faculty member teaching the course,
the use of collaborative learning groups
may encourage active engagement with the
subject matter and intellectual ideas in a
particular course. On the other hand, be-
cause the students in these groups lack ex-
perience as teachers, they may not be pro-
viding the encouragement and feedback
needed by their peers. Some students be-
lieve that their ideas are
most valuable
when
the faculty member hears the ideas directly
from the student and encourages elabora-
tion. For such students, sharing ideas in the
group may be a good starting place for
participation, but they may desire and pre-
fer a direct, immediate response to their
ideas from the faculty member.
In general, our findings showed that the
smaller the course, the more likely it was to
be a course in which students reported par-
ticipating most rather than least. Our
study, however, is limited in two ways.
First, we do not know whether the typical
format of these classes was lecture, discus-
sion, or some combination. Second, the
largest classes at the college typically con-
tain fewer than 50 students, still a relatively
small number at many educational institu-
tions. Therefore we know little about the
effects of these faculty behaviors on classes
of 100 or even 500 students. Nevertheless,
our findings suggest that participation is
encouraged by the frequency with which
the faculty member engages in the behavior
with each student. Classes with an enroll-
ment of more than 100 students present a
challenge that cannot be overcome without
additional efforts by professors. Collabora-
tive learning groups may be one answer;
the
smaller precepts, recitations, and discus-
sion groups required
of undergraduate
stu-
dents and taught by graduate students have
the potential to offer some of the most
active engagement with course materials.
Because graduate students usually lead
these smaller
sections, they will need formal
training in the strategies
for increasing
both
the quantity and the quality of students'
participation to be effective.
It would also have been interesting to
examine the effect of discipline or subject
area. Perhaps the subject matter of some
courses lends itself more easily to participa-
tion by students. In this study we could not
explore disciplinary differences because the
260 courses in the analysis represented
nearly 30 departments;
thus the number of
students mentioning any particular
depart-
ment was too small for analysis.
We consid-
ered
conducting the analysis by division (hu-
manities, social sciences, sciences), but the
courses
within each division seemed too di-
verse. Also, we would have had to compare
the percentages
of students reporting
courses
as MOST and LEAST to actual course enroll-
ments in each division, and these enroll-
ments were not available
to us.
In this study, we have focused predomi-
nantly on a few faculty behaviors that we
thought might enhance students' participa-
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THE CLASSROOM
AS A NEGOTIATED
SOCIAL
SETTING 299
tion in the classroom.
Future
empirical
studies
might focus on additional behaviors
thought
to enhance participation
as well as on faculty
behaviors
thought to inhibit participation,
to
test whether
they truly
have that
effect. More-
over,
the impact
of the physical
setting
and the
arrangement
of the class should be consid-
ered. This is the case
particularly
because
they
offer clues to students about teachers'
expec-
tations of teacher/student roles and interac-
tion, including the extent to which the teach-
ers may wish to embrace or relinquish (as in
role distance) the power associated with their
position. Other researchers
may
want to study
the effect of student characteristics such as
age
or race/ethnicity,
particularly
when such char-
acteristics
make students tokens in the class-
room. In addition, particular
personality
traits
of students
may make them more or less
likely
to participate
regardless
of faculty behavior.
This study circumvents the need for knowing
about such traits
by asking about the courses
in which the student participated
most and
least, regardless
of the actual level of partici-
pation. Also, it would be interesting
to exam-
ine whether factors such as the reason for
taking the course, expected grade in the
course,
subject
area,
and
previous
courses
with
the faculty member have any effect. Finally,
we must address the very difficult task of
finding a
way to measure the impact
of faculty
members' behavior and these other factors
on
the quality
of participation
to learn whether
the increase in participation is fulfilling the
goal of increasing students' critical thinking
and communication skills.
In the meantime, we suggest that faculty
members familiarize themselves with the ex-
isting empirical research on factors which
enhance participation and that they be sen-
sitive to the ways in which their behavior can
affect students' participation. If they do so,
they might be more willing to engage con-
sciously in interactional behaviors that pro-
mote students' participation, and might
worry less about how many windows there
will be in their classroom next semester.
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Carol
J. Auster is an associate
professor
of sociology
at Franklin
and Marshall
College.
Her
research interests
are
gender
and
occupations.
She
is
currently
conducting
a large-scale,
longitudinal
study
of women and men in
engineering
funded
by the
Alfred
P.
Sloan
Foundation.
She is also
working
on a text/reader
in work and
occu-
pations
and an
empirical
study
of
ethics in the academic
profession.
Address
correspondence
to the author at
Department
of Sociology,
Franklin
and Marshall
Col-
lege,
Lancaster,
PA
17604-3003.
Mindy
MacRone
graduated
cum laude
with a B.A.
in sociology
from Franklin and Marshall
College
in
1993. She was elected
to Phi Beta
Kappa
and Alpha
Kappa
Delta.
She was also the 1993 recipient
of the
William M. Kephart
Award
for excellence
in sociology.
She is currently
pursuing
a Master's
Degree
in occupa-
tional
therapy
at
Thomas
Jefferson
University.
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