Student influence upon the teacher: three case studies and their theoretical implications for a bidirectional interaction model

Young, Robert Lloyd (1984) Student influence upon the teacher: three case studies and their theoretical implications for a bidirectional interaction model. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine student influence upon the teacher within the context of a bidirectional model of interaction. The possibility of using the teachers' motivational structure as a means of explaining and predicting the occurence of student influence was also considered. -- The theoretical framework for the study was developed from a review of the literature. The key components of the model were: the teachers' predispositions, including their motivational structure, the objective situation, and the definition of the situation. Presumably, the teachers' behavior would be controlled by their definition of the situation, which would be a function of the predispositional structure and the objective situation. -- The interaction between the teacher and the students in three elementary classrooms was studied. These teachers were chosen from a sample of 54 teachers, who had first been categorized into three groups, on the basis of a Q-Sort. Thus, there was one teacher to represent each of the categories significant others motivated, student motivated and growth motivated. A case study of each class was then conducted. -- The Q-Sort, developed to help choose teachers, proved to be effective for identifying teachers’ predispositions toward categories, but proved inefficient in discriminating teachers' predominant category. -- The results of the study indicated that students did influence the interaction in classrooms, and further indicated that there was a difference in how this influence occurred. However, it proved difficult to predict student influence using the psychological constructs of the three motivational types. In part, this was because teachers were not purely any of the three categories. It was more plausible to rank student behaviors in order of importance and then predict student influence on this basis.

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