The Impact of teacher behavior, teacher sex, and student sex upon student self-disclosure

Abstract

The effects of systematically varied teacher verbal and nonverbal evaluative behavior upon student willingness to self-disclose were studied within an experimental microlesson. Subjects were 126 sixth-grade students who were removed from their classrooms to participate in a vocabulary lesson with one of the four experimental teachers (two male and two female). Within each experimental condition, the teacher employed one of four evaluative styles: (1) verbally and nonverbally positive, (2) verbally positive and nonverbally negative, (3) verbally negative and nonverbally positive, or (4) verbally and nonverbally negative. The data analysis indicated that teachers' verbal behavior influenced self-disclosure. The magnitude of student self-disclosure scores was a direct function of the positiveness of teacher verbal behavior. Nonverbal behavior also influenced self-disclosure, interacting with student sex. This effect varied across individual teachers, however, and no consistent pattern was evident.