THE CLASSROOM AS A NEGOTIATED SOCIAL SETTING - AN EMPIRICAL-STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF FACULTY MEMBERS BEHAVIOR ON STUDENTS PARTICIPATION

Since we believe that the relationship between students and teachers i s the result of responses to a negotiated social setting, we studied t he impact of faculty members' interactional behaviors, particularly th ose indicating role distance from the powerful and all-knowing profess or, on students' participation. We examined the effect of students' ge nder on their perceptions of male and female faculty members' behavior in the classroom. Findings generally indicated that interactional beh aviors which show students the importance of their questions, ideas, a nd knowledge promote student were more likely to be those in which stu dents participated the most, the findings also showed that participati on was not affected by gender per se, but rather by how often the facu lty member engaged in the behavior with the respondent. Consequently, faculty should often: 1) call on students when they volunteer, and cal l on them by name; 2) provide positive reinforcement in the form of en couragement and approval; 3) ask analytical (not factual questions) an d provide students ample time to answer; and 4) ask for students' opin ions even when they do not volunteer. The discussion section further e laborates on the implications of the findings for teaching and for fut ure studies on this topic.