College students' perceptions of treatment acceptability of how college professors deal with disruptive talking in the classroom.(Report)

This study focused on various treatments for addressing the classroom misbehavior of disruptive talking during class lecture. The findings revealed that students found some methods of addressing this problem behavior by the instructor more acceptable than other methods of treating the behavior. College students rated the most acceptable instructor treatment for dealing with disruptive talking was talking to the student privately after class.

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Perlman and McCann (1998) noted that faculty members sometimes do not realize how students view their teaching. In addition, some faculty members have different perspectives from their students on what comprises good teaching. A component of good teaching involves maintaining a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. College faculty may address situations that are disruptive to the college classroom using various methods. The methods that college faculty choose may most likely be those methods which they have found to be effective in the past or that they have seen other faculty use successfully. College faculty may not realize the way in which their treatment of disruptive classroom behaviors may be perceived by the students in the classroom. Plax and Kearney (1999) have noted that college instructors' responses to students' misbehaviors may tend to be either very strict and rigid or very lenient and permissive especially for beginning instructors.

Methods

This study recruited information from college students regarding the acceptability of various methods for treating disruptive behavior in a college classroom. The methodology was similar to that of previous studies examining the acceptability of college instructors' responses to disruptive classroom behaviors (Carter & Punyanunt-Carter, 2006a, 2006b, 2007).

Sample

Participants in the present study were 402 students, enrolled in a basic communication course, from a large southwestern public university. Of the 402 subjects, 177 (44%) were male, 225 (56%) were female. 378 (94%) were Caucasian, 12 (3%) were African-American, and 12 (3%) were of other ethnic origin. The scale was given in a large lecture format. Participants were told that their participation in this survey was completely voluntary and their answers would remain confidential. All participants received credit for their participation.