authority

[aryanhwy]

Back in spring I joined an "Academic Mamas" group on FB, and it's been quite interesting. One thing that has recently come to the fore, in many different threads, is what students should call their teachers. There are a lot of people in the group who are very exercised by ensuring that their students call them "Prof. X" or "Dr. X" and not "hey [

Comments

It might be the culture, it might be the subject

[wyntersea]

It might be that what you are teaching doesn't attract the kind of students that would dis-respect the teacher. Those in your classes know why they want to be there and want to be there, they aren't just fulfilling general requirements to get themselves to the classes they really want to take or support the sports scholarship grade average they need.

On the other hand it could be a cultural thing, when I was growing up the married/older ladies at our church were upset when we (youth)called them by their first names, that was something only one within that group could do.

[aryanhwy]

I'm not sure my subject matter makes much of a difference -- but definitely the university that I teach in makes a difference! The quality of student that is attracted here is very different from what one may get in, say, a US community college.

[silme]

If your students came to Durham from a school with a sixth form attached, then they're used to using titles. Half the time, Miss or Mister just pops out of their mouths due to conditioning. And too many British kids think that Ms is only for divorced women. Those students would be all about Doctor.

But if they come from FE or a sixth form college on its own -- and not an independent sixth form college (as in fees-paying), chances are good that they called their A level lecturers by their first names. It's a good shock to their systems when they arrive at the FE college where I work. Not only do they have the freedom to choose their own clothes (no uniform -- and they love it!), but they're placed on a more equal footing with their teachers in terms of names; we all use first names. In AS English Language, we actually discuss it as a form of accommodation. The students like it. Most of them say it makes them feel more comfortable asking questions.

[aryanhwy]

"In AS English Language, we actually discuss it as a form of accommodation. The students like it. Most of them say it makes them feel more comfortable asking questions."

Oh, that's cool. Do you have any academic literature on the topic that you could recommend?

[silme]

Accommodation theory? That's Howard Giles's baby. He originated it back in the '70s.

There are numerous articles -- good ones by Giles or Giles and Justine Coupland and Nikolas Coupland -- and books as well. Also look for Street and Giles.

Here's a freebie scanned online.
web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/lsa11/gilescouplandcoupland.pdf

[aryanhwy]

Thanks!

[hudebnik]

When I was a newly-minted Ph.D, I made a point of having my students use the title because I wasn't much older than they were and I wanted to recognize explicitly that while we were all adults, there was a power imbalance in our current situation. I could be friendly and approachable, but at the end of the semester I would need to assign them grades, and I was getting paid to be there while they were paying.

As I got older and they didn't, reminding students that we really weren't equals in this context became less of an issue.

Now I'm in the reverse situation: I'm at a workplace where everybody goes by first names, and at least four of my former students work there too; it takes work to get them to use my first name.