Instructional Dissent in the College Classroom

The purpose of this study was to (a) identify perceived triggering agents of student dissent in the college classroom, (b) determine common target receivers of dissent, and (c) reveal the types of dissent that students enact based on their intentional motives and construction of message content. Participants were 123 undergraduate students who completed a survey and provided multiple written narratives in response to open-ended questions. Results of a content analysis revealed that (a) common perceived triggering agents of dissent included (in rank order) unfair testing/assignments, unfair grading, and teaching style, followed by instructor offensiveness, policy, violating syllabus, instructor indolence, lack of feedback, and group members slacking; (b) target receivers of dissent were primarily the class professor, classmates, friends, and family members, among others; and (c) students engaged in three types of dissent including expressive dissent (i.e., to vent their feelings and frustrations), rhetorical dissent (i.e., to attempt to correct a perceived wrongdoing by the instructor), and vengeful dissent (i.e., to retaliate and ruin the reputation of an instructor). Keywords: Instructional DissentStudent DissentUnfairnessStudent CommunicationTeacher Misbehavior Notes 1. The initial content analysis yielded eight triggering agents of student dissent. The initial codebook consisted of Unfair Testing/Grading (defined as any instance in which a student believed a test or other assignment was unfair), Unfair Grading (any instance in which an instructor or teaching assistant enacted an unfair grading practice or committed a grading mistake), Teaching Style (any example of a student disliking the methods or way an instructor teaches), Instructor Offensiveness (any offensive, verbally aggressive, or rude communication directed toward a student or students), Classroom Policies (any rule or policy in class that is disliked), Violating the Syllabus (any deviation or violation from expectations explicitly stated in the syllabus), Instructor Indolence (any instance in which the instructor was not doing his/her job due to laziness), and Group Members Slacking (any instance in which group members were not meeting group expectations). A constant comparative analysis yielded an additional ninth category, labeled Lack of Feedback (any instance in which an instructor failed to provide detailed or any feedback on an submitted assignment). This category emerged as a distinct conceptual label from Instructor Indolence. The targets of dissent were straightforward and coded without definitions in the final codebook. The types of dissent data yielded three distinct types that did not crosscut or link: rhetorical (defined as any dissent message designed to influence another person towards the direction of a student goal), expressive (any dissent message designed to express and vent student feelings or gain support from others), and vengeful (any dissent message designed to seek revenge for a perceived wrongdoing). 2. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this conceptual overlap in findings between the organizational and instructional contexts. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlan K. Goodboy Alan K. Goodboy (Ph.D., West Virginia University, 2007) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Bloomsburg University