A Comparative Examination of Classroom Interactions between Professors and Minority and Non-Minority College Students

Abstract

Observations were made of instructor-student classroom interactions at the collegiate level. The academic expectations of the instructors, as well as their reported interactions with minority college students, also were assessed. Professors interacted differentially at a significant level with minority versus non-minority students in the majority of the behavioral observations, and the instructors had significantly lower academic expectations of undergraduate minority students compared with non-minority students. This investigation has contributed to the study of teacher-student interaction and has proposed a theoretical link between the behavior teachers exhibit toward low-expectancy children and that received by minority students.