"'You Know?: Decoding 'Knowing' in The English Professor/Student Relationship"

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"'You Know?': Decoding 'Knowing' in the English Professor/Student Relationship"

This project is a Master's thesis, completed by Chloe Allmand in spring 2018. Allmand uses grounded theory methods, including interviewing and observing study participants, and coding data, to study what university professors, particularly in the English department of the university Allmand attended, mean when they use the common phrase “getting to know students.” Ultimately, Allmand finds that “Knowing students” can be broken down by considering hierarchical and intimate distance between professors and students, the degree of knowing, the roles professors and students embody, and the rapport between professors and their students. The project was overseen by Dr. Donna Qualley (committee chair), Dr. Jeremy Cushman, and Dr. Dawn Dietrich. The full project is viewable in Western Washington University's Graduate School Collection at https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/689/.

Research Questions

1. What does it mean to English professors at this university to “know” their students?
2. Is “knowing students” always a good thing, as we seem to understand it to be?
3. How might knowing students affect professors’ teaching?
4. To what extent do professors find the concept of “knowing students” important to their teaching, or to themselves as teachers?

Methodology

Grounded theory is a form of qualitative research, originally developed by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in the late 1960s, as outlined in their 1967 book ''The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research''. Grounded theory researchers work with original data to build new theories and/or theoretical concepts, instead of applying or replicating existing theories in a given field. The grounded theory process consists of intensive interviews, observation or field work, coding, and constant recursive comparison of data. Allmand uses a constructivist approach, as outlined by Kathy Charmaz in ''Constructing Grounded Theory''. Eight professors (referred to in the project by pseudonyms) participated in the project during fall and winter quarters 2018. To capture the various fields within the department, the sample of eight professors includes creative writing, literature, and writing studies faculty. Allmand collected data for this study by interviewing the participants individually (some only once, others twice), and observing their teaching (again, some once, others twice). Though the majority of the study was based on the author's original data, other research of note includes Nel Noddings' "Caring in Education," Jeff Grabill's “Learning, Teaching, and a Culture of Care" and Patricia Bizzell's “We Want to Know Who Our Students Are.”

Categories and Codes

After coding the interviews and class observations, Allmand named four categories of data: Determining the Degrees of Knowing, Building Class Rapport, Maintaining Class Rapport, and Leveling the Playing Field. Each of these categories includes multiple codes, and each code describes different ways in which English professors “get to know” their students, and varying elements of the English professor/student relationship. In the paper, Allmand shares quotes from the professors and examples from the class observations as ways of illustrating each category and code. The codes within each category are as follows:

Determining the Degrees of Knowing

• Distinguishing Roles as Professors
• Knowing Students as Students
• Knowing Students as People
• Building Productive Boundaries
• Asking to Be Called by Title

Building Class Rapport

• Valuing Knowing Students Names
• Getting Students to Know Each Other and Work Together
• Sharing Personal Stories
• Getting Laughs

Maintaining Class Rapport

• Checking In
• Laughing with Students
• Running Jokes
• Teasing Students

Leveling the Playing Field

• Allowing a First Name Basis
• Getting Student Voices into the Classroom
• Valuing Student Input
• Breaking Classroom Spatial Boundaries
• Sharing Own Working Practices

Resulting Theories

As a result of the categories and codes that emerged from the data, Allmand names two theories in response to her research questions: "The distance-degree continuum" and rule breaking vs. "role breaking."

Allmand describes “knowing students” as a multi-dimensional relationship between professors and students, illustrated by “the distance-degree continuum.” The “distance-degree continuum” is spherical, and multiple variables act on each other at all times. Distance refers to hierarchical and intimate distance between professors and students. Degree refers to degree of knowing between professors and students. In this continuum, distance, degree, roles, and rapport act on one another to offer a more complete and complex idea of “knowing” than relying on any one element alone .

Allmand uses the continuum to distinguish between professors who “rule break” and those who “role break.” She defines rule breaking as engaging in explicitly prohibited relationships with students, while role breaking is murkier. According to Allmand, professors can role break either intentionally or accidentally by stepping out of the roles that are typically appropriate and productive in their relationships with students. The study participants named teacher, mentor, and fellow writer as productive roles for themselves to embody, while potentially damaging roles include friend or therapist. Allmand concludes that for “knowing” to be productive between professors and their students, it must serve a pedagogical purpose, and remain bounded by the intent of the relationship, which is to teach and to learn.

This page was created by Chloe Allmand for the reference of others, not for promotional purposes.

References

1. Allmand, Chloe, "You Know?: Decoding ‘Knowing’ in the English Professor/Student Relationship" (2018). WWU Graduate School Collection. 689.

https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/689

1. Bizzell, Patricia. “We Want to Know Who Our Students Are.” PMLA, Vol. 129, No. 3, 2014, pp. 442-447.
2. Charmaz, Kathy. Constructing Grounded Theory. Sage Publications, 2014.
3. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Pantheon, 1977.
4. Gonzalez, Jennifer. “A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students.” Cult of Pedagogy. www.cultofpedagogy.com/relationship-building/. Accessed 10 May 2018.
5. Grabill, Jeff. “Learning, Teaching, and a Culture of Care.” Michigan State University. hub.msu.edu/learning-teaching-and-a-culture-of-care/. Accessed 10 May 2018.
6. “Level Playing Field.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_playing_field. Accessed 16 May 2018.
7. Noddings, Nel. “Caring in Education.” The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. www.uvm.edu/~rgriffin/NoddingsCaring.pdf. Accessed 10 May 2018.
8. Perrotta, Tom. Election. Putnam, 1998.
9. Peshkin, Alan. “In Search of Subjectivity: One’s Own.” 1988.
10. Piercy, Marge. “To Be of Use.” Circles of Water. Knopf. 1982.
11. Schaeffer, Eliza Jane. “Level Footing: The Professor-Student Dynamic.” The Dartmouth. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2017/05/eliza-jane-professors-students. Accessed 10 May 2018.
12. “The One Where Ross Dates a Student.” Friends: The Complete Sixth Season, written by David Crane and Marta Kaufmann, directed by Gary Halvorson, Warner Brothers, 2000.
13. Van Halen. “Hot For Teacher.” 1984, Warner Brothers Records, 1984.

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