The appropriateness of teacher self‐disclosure: a comparative study of China and the USA

Abstract

The present study was designed to examine pre‐service teachers’ attitudes towards teacher self‐disclosure in Chinese and US classroom teaching. The participants of this study included 126 Chinese pre‐service teachers and 180 US pre‐service teachers. Results showed statistically significant differences between the two groups in their attitudes towards five dimensions of teacher self‐disclosure: common topics, uncommon topics, common purposes, uncommon purposes and consideration of students. The discussion focuses on the underlying reasons for the differences and the implications for cross‐cultural education.

Keywords:

• teacher self‐disclosure
• appropriateness of teacher self‐disclosure
• pre‐service teachers
• cross‐cultural study

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ms Xueyu Ma for her help with the data collection. They also would like to thank Dr Jesus Garcia for his comments on an earlier draft of this article. They especially appreciate the editor and the reviewers for their suggestions on the revision of this paper.