Professorial presumptuousness in verbal interactions with university students

Abstract

Interpersonal “presumptuousness” by students and professors in classroom discussions and brief laboratory conversations was inferred on the basis of an utterance-by-utterance coding of the verbal interaction. The presumptuousness index was the proportion of a person's utterances that were coded as “advisement” (e.g., commands, suggestions, advice, permission, prohibition), “interpretation (e.g., judgments, evaluations, labeling, or explaing the other), “confirmation” (e.g., agreement, disagreement, statements of shared experience), or “reflection” (e.g., repetitions, restatements, clarifications). These four “verbal response modes” have in common an implicit presumption of knowledge of the person addressed (e.g., what he or she should do, what he or she is feeling), according to a recently developed discourse coding system. Results supported the hypothesis that professors would be more presumptuous than students in both settings. Quantitative and qualitative descriptions of student-professor interaction based on other aspects of the discourse coding system are also presented and discussed.