Teacher-Student Relationship

Teacher-student relationship has been an area of study for many years. Two articles found in "Communication Education" help explain certain teacher-student relationship aspects.

The first article entitled "College Student Attendance: Impact of Instructor Immediacy and Verbal Aggression" written by Kelly A. Rocca was published in "Communication Education" Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2004, pp.185-195. In this study, Rocca examines the relation between undergraduate university students' attendance and their perceptions of the instructor's nonverbal immediacy and verbal aggression. Rocca proposes two hypothesis based on previous studies;

H1: There is a negative relation between reported class absences and instructor nonverbal immediacy.

H2: There is a positive relation between reported class absences and perceived teacher verbal aggression.

The study was conducted by asking 189 undergraduate students in two courses to fill out a questionnaire the week before finals week in the semester based on the teacher they had. The questionnaire contained attendance measures, the ten item Nonverbal Immediacy Measure (Thomas et al., 1994), a ten-item version of the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (Infant & Wigley, 1986) and demographic questions. There were three types of attendance measures; (1) self reported missing class, (2) self reported attending class and (3) teacher's assistant recorded attendance. The results of this research indicate that hypothesis 1 was supported with two of the three attendance measures. There was a negative relationship with attendance measures (1) and (2) and instructor's nonverbal immediacy. However, there was no significant relationship between attendance measure (3) and the instructor's nonverbal immediacy. The results of this research indicate that hypothesis 2 was also supported with two of the three attendance measures. There was a positive relationship with attendance measures (1) and (2) and the instructor's verbal aggression. However, there was no significant relationship between attendance measure (3) and the instructor's verbal aggression. The findings demonstrate that students who perceive their instructor as having higher nonverbal immediacy are more likely to attend class and that students who perceive their instructor as having higher verbal aggression are less likely to attend class.

The second article entitled "The Effects of Student Verbal and Nonverbal Responsiveness on Teacher Self-Efficacy and Job Satisfaction", written by Timothy P. Mottet, Steven A. Beebe, Paul C. Raffeld and Amanda L. Medlock was published in Communication Education Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2004, pp. 150-163. This study examines the effect of student verbal and nonverbal responsiveness