Student-to-Teacher Confirmation: An Initial Investigation of the Types of Messages and Outcomes

ABSTRACT

To date, instructional scholars have established how teachers confirm students and how students confirm one another, but have not yet explored how students confirm teachers. Thus, by using a grounded theory approach the current study inductively explored how teachers are made to feel valuable and significant by their students. Collegiate instructors were surveyed (N = 85), and results indicate that there are four categories of student-to-teacher confirmation (i.e., recognition of individuality, acknowledgment of instructional practice, observation of growth, and extrinsic recognition), which are comprised of nine distinct messages. These messages result in a variety of positive outcomes for instructors.

KEYWORDS:

• Confirmation
• student behavior
• student-to-teacher communication
• teacher outcomes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Another seven participants (8.1%) described their tenure status as un-tenured or non-tenured, but made no reference to being on the tenure track.

2. In total RQ2 yielded 126 units of analysis. This included 13 units that were not included in these analyses, due to their failure to answer the research question (e.g., when participants described that they were unaffected by these messages, because they were received at the completion or conclusion of a course. For example, one participant stated “Not really because the class was already pretty much over”), or forcefully recur in meaningful ways (i.e., when participants simply stated “positively” or “very positively”). Thus, these percentages were calculated out of 113.