Student perceptions of instructor communication behaviors and their relationship to student evaluation

Abstract

This investigation summarizes the findings of an initial study designed to explore the relationship between instructor communication variables—i.e., communicator style, disclosiveness, and solidarity—and student learning and reports in detail a follow up study which assessed the relationship between the same set of instructor variables and student evaluations. A linear combination of perceived instructor communication behaviors was found to be significantly related to instructor evaluations; however, solidarity did not add significant predictive power to the model. The implications of these findings for the practicing teacher were considered.