Session Information
SES F 02, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
The submitted paper deals with behavioral alteration techniques and their usage by secondary school pupils in the Czech Republic. Behavioral alteration techniques—which are defined as communication techniques that “are conceptualized as power based influence techniques” (Golish & Olson, 2000, p. 295)—have been researched since the beginning of the 1980’s. This is given by the fact that they are taken to be one of the fundamental tools for the use of power in the classroom (Kearney, Plax, Richmond, McCroskey, 1985, p. 19). Power, which can be defined as a person’s ability to influence behavior of other person or a group (McCroskey, Richmond, McCroskey, 2006, p. 83), is in the school environment mostly associated with the teachers. This holds true even for behavioral alteration techniques which have often been researched so as to show how they are used by the teacher. Yet, in order to fully understand the use of power and its negotiation in the classroom, it is absolutely essential to focus on how these techniques are used by the pupils as well (Golish & Olson, 2000, p. 294). Moreover, even though the pupils don’t have the same amount of power at their disposal as their teachers do, they can still enter the process of negotiation of power thanks to the usage of active behavioral techniques. Thus, they can significantly influence the nature of educational processes.
The objective of the submitted paper is to describe particular behavioral alteration techniques and the ways in which they are put to use by pupils in the environment of Czech secondary schools (ISCED 2A) and, at the same, to analyze the pupils’ perception of the usage of these techniques. Given that this phenomenon has not yet been researched in the Czech Republic, my study draws on the typology of behavioral alteration techniques as it was established by Golish and Olson (1999), which I apply to the environment of Czech secondary schools. In this respect, the study also reflects how the usage of this typology is viable for the environment of Czech secondary schools. Consequently, the study inspects factors which influence the selection and occurrence of particular behavioral techniques.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Golish, T. D. Students’ Use of Compliance-gaining Strategies with Graduate Teaching Assistants: Examining the Other End of the Power Spectrum. Communication Quarterly, Vol. 47, 1999, 12-32. Golish, T. D., & Olson, L. N. Students’ Use of Power in the Classroom: An Investigation of Student Power, Teach Power, and Teacher Immediacy. Communication Quarterly, Vol. 48, 2000, 293-310. Kearney, P., Plax, T. G., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. Power in the Classroom III: Teacher Communication Techniques and Messages. Communication Education, Vol. 34, 1985, p. 19-28. Kennedy-Lightsey, C. D., Myers, S. A. College Students’ Use of Behavioral Alteration Techniques as a Function of Aggressive Communication. Communication Education, Vol. 58, No. 1, 2009, p. 54-73. McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, L. L. An Introduction to Communication in the Classroom: The Role of Communication in Teaching and Training. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2006.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.