Alan K. Goodboy and Zachary W. Goldman

6Teacher Power and Compliance-Gaining

Abstract: From the earliest onsets of children’s formal education to advanced forms of adult learning, grade-school teachers and college instructors use power in their classrooms to influence their students, manage their behavior, encourage their academic efforts, and keep them focused on learning tasks. It is ultimately the manner in which educators acquire and use their power that determines the effectiveness and appropriateness of their influence over their students. Teachers and instructors may choose from many bases of power and strategies to influence their students; these choices have important effects on and implications for students and their learning environments. In this chapter, a comprehensive and historical account of power is reviewed, tracing research from the 1980s to the present. Focusing primarily on the field of instructional communication, this chapter examines key findings from the teacher power literature, reviews the measurement and methodology choices used to inform this scholarship, summarizes past and current critiques facing this body of research, and concludes with recommendations for future scholars to embrace a more critical approach to studying power in the classroom.

Keywords: teacher power, power bases, student compliance-gaining, behavior alteration techniques, behavior alteration messages, prosocial BATs, antisocial BATs, French and Raven, Power in the Classroom, teaching assistants

From kindergarten to college classrooms, the ways in which teachers use power to gain students’ compliance and influence their behavior is essential to both instruction and education. Without power, or the ability to effectively influence others, teachers would be unable to perform their most basic responsibilities (Kearney, 1987). The absence or misuse of power makes it difficult, if not impossible, to capture students’ attention and maintain the necessary respect needed to lead a classroom (Plax & Kearney, 1992). Put simply, power is critical to a teacher’s ability to influence the conduciveness of a learning environment, and ultimately, student growth.

Of course, power is a term that is used in a variety of ways across many academic disciplines. Tracing the exhaustive history of power research is beyond the scope of any individual review as the definitions, methodologies, and findings from such investigations vary significantly from one discipline to another. Therefore, this chapter focuses specifically on power and compliance-gaining scholarship conducted within the field of instructional communication. For over 30 years, scholars have examined the ways in which teachers communicate power to gain students’ compliance and influence their learning in the classroom. To summarize the research on teacher power within the instructional communication literature, this chapter will (a) provide definitions that are needed to understand the importance of power in the classroom; (b) trace the history of power and communication research over the last several decades beginning with the seminal “Power in the Classroom” series; (c) examine the ways in which power has been measured within and outside of the communication discipline; (d) review the criticisms and controversies that have been raised against power and compliance-gaining research; and (e) offer conclusions and recommendations to advance this line of research in the future.

Definitions and the Importance of Power

Research on power in the communication discipline originated from the work of social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven. French and Raven (1959) originally defined power as an individual’s ability to influence or change another’s “behavior, opinions, attitudes, goals, needs, values, and all other aspects of the … psychological field” (p. 151). This definition was later specified by noting that power may also entail the potential for such change, but must be the direct result of an influence exerted by another person, rather than an inadvertent combination of personal, social, or environmental factors (French & Raven, 1968). In other words, French and Raven viewed power as the perceived influence that an individual directly has over another person. The manner in which change is induced in others was thought to be rooted in the perception of the targeted individual, and thus, was subject to variability (French, 1956). Therefore, French and Raven (1959, 1968) introduced the concept of power bases, which refer to sources of power that exist to explain why individuals perceive others as having the ability to influence their behavior and/or attitudes. Although there are potentially numerous sources of power from which individuals may choose to influence others, French and Raven (1968) identified and defined five power bases they believed to be especially common and most important in social science research: legitimate, expert, referent, reward, and coercive.

Legitimate power is specific to a position or role; it stems from the internalized values and obligations of accepting the prescribed behavior of another person because of the title or status that is held by the requesting individual (French & Raven, 1959). Expert power originates from the perception that one individual has expertise or knowledge that is coveted by receivers, thus making them susceptible to influence (French & Raven, 1968). Referent power is based on the extent to which one person identifies with another individual and is maintained through perceptions of social attraction, affinity, and similarity (French & Raven, 1959). Coercive power stems from one’s ability to administer punishments or inflict undesirable outcomes on another person as a result of non-compliance (French, 1956). Conversely, reward power is rooted in the extent to which one person can incentivize compliance by providing positive valences or removing negative valences for another individual (French & Raven, 1959).

Noting that a “certain degree of power is always present” within the classroom setting (p. 125), Hurt, Scott, and McCroskey (1978) originally suggested that French and Raven’s power bases may be applied to the educational context as a framework to explain teachers’ influence over students. Hurt et al. offered one of the first conceptualizations of teacher power, which they defined as the “ability to affect in some way the student’s well-being beyond the student’s own control” (1978, p. 124). This conceptualization was later referred to by McCroskey and Richmond (1983) as the “lay definition” because it was highly consistent with the perception of actual K-12 and college educators at the time; however, they also observed that an obvious flaw existed with Hurt and colleagues’ seminal definition of teacher power because it suggested “an absence of intellectual assent to influence on the part of the student” (p. 176). As a result, Richmond and McCroskey (1984) revised the definition of teacher power by adding that it exists “only insofar as students perceive it to exist and accept it” (p. 125). Using these definitions, scholars began a line of research on teacher power and compliance-gaining during the early 1980s that has continued to develop over the last several decades.

Historical Review of Power in the Classroom: Trends Throughout the Decades

Seminal Studies and Power Research in the 1980s

In the instructional communication literature, the exploration of teacher power and influence originated with seven consecutive investigations that would eventually be known as the “Power in the Classroom” series (McCroskey & Richmond, 1983; Richmond & McCroskey, 1984). According to McCroskey and Richmond, the initial purpose of these investigations was to adopt French and Raven’s (1959, 1968) five power bases into the classroom context in order to “determine how teacher power affects student learning and how teachers may modify their communication behavior and use of power to enhance learning” (McCroskey & Richmond, 1983, p. 178). The findings from “Power in the Classroom I” indicated that teachers and students believed the expert, reward, and referent power bases were used most frequently in the classroom; however, the associations between instructor and student perceptions were relatively weak. The lack of correspondence between teacher and student perceptions of power prompted McCroskey and Richmond (1983) to suggest that students respond to their own interpretation of power use, regardless of instructors’ intent; thus, they concluded that subsequent research should primarily focus on receiver (i.e., student) perceptions of power, as these viewpoints were likely better predictors of instructional outcomes and learning than teachers’ own reported power use.

“Power in the Classroom II” (Richmond & McCroskey, 1984) tested the assumption that students’ perceptions of power were more important than teachers’ reported use of power by examining the influence of each perception on students’ affective and cognitive learning (i.e., the anticipated grade at the end of the course). Evidence from both teachers and students revealed that expert and referent power were related positively to students’ learning, whereas coercive and legitimate power were related negatively with learning. The perceived use of reward power was generally unrelated to both affective and cognitive learning. As expected, students’ perceptions of power were more strongly associated with learning than teachers’ own reports, validating the notion that power in the classroom is best defined and understood from the student/ receiver perspective (Richmond & McCroskey, 1984).

“Power in the Classroom III” (Kearney, Plax, Richmond, & McCroskey, 1985) and “Power in the Classroom IV” (Kearney, Plax, Richmond, & McCroskey, 1984) introduced significant changes to the series as these investigations focused on the specific behavior alteration techniques (BATs) and behavior alteration messages (BAMs) that teachers use to communicate power and gain students’ compliance in the classroom. Originally, Kearney et al. (1985) proposed a typology of 18 BATs, derived by asking college students to identify the ways in which they would elicit compliance from others. Example BAMs were then created to accompany each of the identified BATs, and the typology was given to elementary and secondary teachers in a checklist format to determine which of the techniques teachers report using most often. Kearney et al. (1984) also determined that it was important to inductively derive BATs from teachers themselves, in case the original typology did not fully capture the wide array of techniques and messages that teachers use to gain student compliance. This decision resulted in four additional BATs bringing the total to 22 distinct teacher compliance-gaining strategies. All of the BATs are provided in Table 1, along with definitions from Kearney et al. (1984, 1985). We also provide accompanying examples of BAMs that a teacher might use to communicate a desired BAT to a student who does not want to comply with giving a speech.

“Power in the Classroom V” (McCroskey, Richmond, Plax, & Kearney, 1985) advanced the research program by exploring the antecedents and consequences of using teacher BATs in the classroom. They discovered that the use of BATs varied as a function of instructional training and student quality, as teachers were more likely to use prosocial BATs (i.e., techniques that contained a positive valence) when they had received previous communication training and when students were perceived to be of high quality. Unsurprisingly, prosocial BATs were related positively to students’ affective learning, whereas antisocial BATs (i.e., techniques that contained a negative valence) were correlated negatively with learning in the classroom.

Table 1:Behavioral Alteration Techniques – Definitions and Examples

Note. a Prosocial BATs. b Antisocial BATs. c Neutral BATs. Classifications derived from Kearney, Plax, Sorensen, and Smith’s (1988) exploratory factor analysis.

Similar to findings from the first two power studies (McCroskey & Richmond, 1983; Richmond & McCroskey, 1984), the degree to which students and teachers shared perceptions of teacher BAT usage was minimal. Moreover, from this investigation, McCroskey et al. concluded that learning is actually a secondary outcome of BATs, as most teachers do not intentionally use compliance-gaining strategies to improve students’ understanding or their attitude about the course. Rather, the primary goal of BATs is to alter behavior by gaining compliance; thus, McCroskey et al. argued that future investigations should focus on students’ compliance and resistance as the direct instructional outcomes of BATs.

“Power in the Classroom VI” (Plax, Kearney, McCroskey, & Richmond, 1986) added context to the exploration of BATs by examining the role of nonverbal immediacy in the selection and subsequent interpretation of teachers’ verbal compliance-gaining strategies. Using a sample of high school and college students, results of the investigation reaffirmed that a positive relationship exists between prosocial BATs and affective learning. Moreover, nonverbal immediacy was found to play a mediating role in the relationship between BATs and learning, indicating that the “use of pro-social … messages to alter student behavior tends to increase student perceptions of the teacher’s immediacy which in turn leads to greater affective learning on the part of the student” (Plax et al., 1986, p. 54). That being said, Plax et al. reiterated the argument that learning is a byproduct of BATs, as teachers primarily employ compliance-gaining strategies to alter behavior and reduce resistance to compliance; as such, the authors recommended that future researchers should explore how teachers select BATs based on specific problems with students.

“Power in the Classroom VII” (Richmond, McCroskey, Kearney, & Plax, 1987) concluded the original series by reexamining the relationship between BATs and students’ cognitive learning. Specifically, Richmond et al. revisited the measurement of cognitive learning due to criticisms that had been raised against standardized tests and assigned semester grades (c.f., Richmond & McCroskey, 1984). The authors developed the learning loss measure that assessed how much students perceived they learned in a course, as well as how much they think they could have learned with the ideal instructor. The latter value was then subtracted from the first to create students’ perceived learning loss (i.e., a proxy for cognitive learning). Using this new measure, college students were asked to report on their “best” or “worst” instructor of the semester who taught a course outside of their own major. Results of the study revealed that students perceived good and bad instructors as using different BATs; for example, good instructors were more likely to use reward-based and responsibility BATs, whereas bad instructors were more likely to use punishment BATs. Similar to Richmond and McCroskey’s (1984) previous findings, prosocial BATs were found to be related positively to students’ cognitive learning (i.e., as measured by the learning loss scale), whereas antisocial BATs were found to share a negative association with learning in the classroom.

Research from the original “Power in the Classroom” series also spawned numerous other investigations on power and BATs during the 1980s. In general, these studies advanced the seminal program of research by helping scholars understand the antecedents and consequences of using compliance-gaining strategies in both high school and college classrooms. Specifically, research on BATs during the 1980s furthered the original series by (a) continuing the exploration of individual differences while also introducing situational determinants as explanations for teachers’ use of BATs (Kearney & Plax, 1987; Kearney, Plax, Sorensen, & Smith, 1988; Wheeless, Stewart, Kearney, & Plax, 1987); (b) examining outcomes other than learning that occur as a result of using BATs in the classroom (Kearney, Plax, Smith, & Sorensen, 1988; Plax, Kearney, & Downs, 1986; Plax, Kearney, Downs, & Stewart, 1986); and (c) comparing the selection, usage, and interpretation of BATs between prospective and experienced teachers (Kearney & Plax, 1987; Kearney, Plax, Sorensen, et al., 1988; Plax, Kearney, & Tucker, 1986).

Kearney and Plax (1987) observed that although teachers do not use BATs with global outcomes in mind, the original power series “focused on teachers’ decisions to employ behavior alteration techniques across all student misbehaviors generally” (p. 146). To address this limitation, investigations in the latter portion of the 1980s began to explore situational determinants of BATs by examining the techniques teachers use to gain compliance when reacting to specific student misbehaviors. Using scenario-based experiments, Kearney, Plax, and colleagues discovered that teachers vary in their selection of BATs depending upon the intentionality, severity, and frequency of students’ misbehavior in the classroom (Kearney & Plax, 1987; Kearney, Plax, Smith, et al., 1988; Plax et al., 1986). Moreover, during this time period, teachers’ gender was studied as an individual difference that affected the use of BATs; specifically, male and female teachers were found to vary in their selection of prosocial and antisocial BATs (e.g., males were more likely to use punishments and females more likely to use rewards), which prompted researchers to conclude that stereotypes associated with gender play a significant role in determining the compliance-gaining strategies that teachers employ in the classroom (Kearney & Plax, 1987). That being said, the gender of students has no significant role in the use and/or interpretation of BATs (Kearney, Plax, Sorensen, et al., 1988), but the degree to which students have adopted an internal locus of control was a significant individual difference that affected the perception and compliance that students had toward teachers’ BATs in the classroom (Wheeless et al., 1987).

Research from the late 1980s also examined additional instructional outcomes, primarily student resistance and teacher satisfaction in relation to BAT use. As originally observed by McCroskey et al. (1985), teachers select and use BATs primarily to gain compliance; although student learning is affected as a secondary outcome, the extent to which students resist compliance-gaining attempts is considered the primary consequence of teacher power use and BATs (Kearney, 1987). Noting this, Kearney et al. (1988) conducted an experiment to assess the combined effects of teachers’ nonverbal immediacy and BATs on students’ resistance to compliance. Their findings revealed a significant interaction between the two teaching behaviors in that students were least likely to resist immediate teachers who used prosocial BATs and most likely to resist non-immediate teachers who used antisocial BATs (Kearney et al., 1988). These results complemented Plax et al. (1986) who utilized psychological reactance theory to discover that students are most resistant to BATs that reflect peer pressure, modeling of behavior, or coercive intent. At the same time, students were not the only ones who were affected by BATs in the classroom. Plax, Kearney and Downs (1986) found that teachers themselves were more satisfied when they used prosocial BATs and less satisfied when they used antisocial BATs. Taken together, then, these results suggest that the selection and use of BATs not only affect students’ primary and secondary outcomes (i.e., resistance and learning), but also instructors’ attitudes toward students and teaching in general.

Of course, teachers are likely to change their attitudes and behaviors in the classroom over time as a result of their previous encounters with students. As such, researchers in the late 1980s began to explore the importance of experience as an explanation for teachers’ use of BATs based on the assumption that “inexperienced teachers view classroom control differently from experienced teachers” (Plax et al., 1986, p. 32). Results from these investigations revealed that experienced teachers use compliance-gaining techniques more frequently and use a more diverse array of BATs in general than inexperienced teachers (see Kearney, 1987). Such findings prompted Kearney and Plax (1987) to speculate that “experienced teachers’ cognitive schemes for classroom management are more well-integrated, sophisticated structures that consider relevant situational determinants in their selection of compliance-gaining techniques” (p. 162). Both prospective teachers and experienced teachers relied most frequently on the same two BATs (i.e., self-esteem and teacher feedback) to deal with students’ misbehaviors, suggesting that some BATs may be more effective regardless of expertise (Kearney et al., 1988).

Power Research in the 1990s

Teacher power and compliance-gaining research in the 1990s was characterized by two important additions to the literature. The first addition was studying teacher power in other cultures. In the first study to examine BATs outside of the United States, Lu (1997) discovered that similar to American classrooms, teachers in China used 21 of the BATs to secure compliance from their students. Interestingly, Chinese teachers did not report using the self-esteem BAT, but used an additional BAT that was labeled self-consciousness (i.e., students should comply because they have the opportunity to). Lu found that Chinese teachers preferred to use the following BATs: punishment from behavior, deferred reward from behavior, guilt, legitimatehigher authority, personal (student) responsibility, and expert teacher. Conversely, Chinese teachers rarely reported using immediate reward from behavior, reward from others, punishment from others, legitimate-teacher authority, and debt.

The second addition to the power literature was applying the power perspective to other instructional persons beyond the teacher (e.g., teaching assistants, principals, department chairs). Led by K. David Roach, this research revealed important differences in student perceptions of power. Several studies were conducted on teaching assistant (TA) power. Roach (1991a) found that TAs most frequently used the following BATs: teacher feedback, expert teacher, legitimate-higher authority, immediate reward from behavior, and teacher modeling. Of these BATs, TAs preferred teacher feedback and expert teacher the most. TAs least frequently used punishment from others, guilt, debt, peer modeling, and reward from others. Roach (1991a) discovered that most TA BATs were unrelated to affective learning and that TAs used legitimate-higher authority, legitimate-teacher authority, normative rules, and teacher modeling more frequently than professors. Further research suggested that students believe TA argumentativeness to be a display of power; TAs who were not argumentative relied on more legitimate, referent, and expert power than argumentative TAs (Roach, 1995a). Roach (1995b) found that TA argumentativeness correlated positively with referent and expert power.

Roach also conducted studies on administrators’ use of power. The first study (Roach, 1991c) examined the compliance-gaining strategies that chairpersons use with their faculty and revealed three dimensions of strategies: (a) expectancies/ consequences, (b) relationships/identification, and (c) values/obligations. Faculty believed effective (vs ineffective) chairs gain compliance by (a) making faculty want to do the right thing, (b) avoiding faculty punishments, and (c) helping faculty feel better about themselves. Roach (1991b) also conducted a study on K-12 teachers’ perceptions of principals’ use of supervisory power. Teachers reported being satisfied when principals used referent, expert, and reward power, but were dissatisfied with coercive power use. Roach (1991b) also found when principals used prosocial BATs, teachers perceived them as having expert power.

Beyond these two additions to the teacher power literature, several studies continued to traditionally examine instructors’ use of BATs and power bases. To extend the power research beyond student learning, Richmond (1990) found that student motivation was associated negatively with teacher coercive power, but associated positively with referent and expert power. Teachers’ use of authoritybased BATs and coercion-based BATs were related negatively to student motivation, but most of BATs (i.e., 14 of them) had no relationship to motivation. Roach (1994) conducted a longitudinal study of teacher BAT use across the semester and observed that instructors used moderate levels of prosocial BATs and low levels of antisocial BATs. Roach reported that more BATs were used during the middle of the semester than at the beginning, and that prosocial BATs were correlated positively, and antisocial BATs were correlated negatively, with cognitive and affective learning at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester.

Power Research in the 2000s

At the turn of the century, researchers began making a concerted effort to study more diverse populations in order to understand how teacher power affects a wider range of students. Specifically, teacher power and compliance-gaining scholars from 2000 to 2009 continued to examine power across cultures/countries (i.e., United States, France, Germany, China), and their investigations frequently revealed cultural differences among instructor power bases and student responses. Roach, Cornett-DeVito, and DeVito (2005) found that American instructors used significantly more reward and referent power than French instructors, while French instructors relied more on legitimate power to gain students’ compliance. Roach and Byrne (2001) found that American instructors report using more power altogether (all five bases) than German instructors, but the use of all five power bases were unrelated to students’ affective and cognitive learning in Germany. Although such findings indicate that power functions differently in Germany in comparison to the U.S., two later studies revealed no differences in teacher BAT use between Chinese and American instructors (Liu, Sellnow, & Venette 2006; Sellnow, Liu, & Venette, 2006).

In another effort to study power using a diverse population, Worley and Cornett-DeVito (2007) found that students with learning disabilities (SWLD) described their teachers as using competent and incompetent forms of power. Competent forms of teacher power included referent power (SWLD described their instructors as supportive and accessible), expert power (described their instructors as having an academic background with SWLD, had a child with a LD, or had their own LD), and legitimate power (described the teacher as accommodating to the student even though it was difficult). Incompetent forms of power included coercive power (described as lack of respect and resisting accommodations) and legitimate power (said they could not help because of inexperience or only helped because it was the law, made the student pick up the test and take it to accommodative services in front of other students).

An additional theme that emerged in the 2000s was the continued examination of learning outcomes beyond students’ perceived cognitive learning. Weber (2004) found that some of the prosocial BATs correlated positively with learner empowerment and some of the antisocial BATs were correlated negatively; however, self-esteem, deferred reward, reward from teacher, and teacher authority were the only BATs that uniquely predicted learner empowerment. Similarly, Schrodt et al. (2008) found that referent power was a strong predictor of learner empowerment and teacher evaluations were higher when instructors used referent and expert power; lower evaluations were correlated with coercive power. Moreover, in line with this theme, Weber, Martin, and Patterson (2001) found that in an 8th-grade sample, many prosocial teacher BATs were correlated positively with affect and interest, whereas antisocial BATs were correlated negatively with both attitudinal responses.

The remaining research during this decade examined instructor characteristics and student outcomes related to teacher power use. This research showed that when instructors used antisocial BATs, students are more likely to resist compliance (Paulsel & Chory-Assad, 2004) and respond with indirect aggressiveness (Chory-Assad & Paulsel, 2004). Moreover, students perceived teachers who use prosocial power bases to be fair (Paulsel, Chory-Assad, & Dunleavy, 2005), credible (Teven & Herring, 2005), and confirming (Turman & Schrodt, 2006). Teven (2007) found that instructors were perceived as more Machiavellian when they relied on legitimate power, but less Machiavellian when they relied on expert power. This decade ended with a study by Horan and Myers (2009), who determined that instructors who are concerned with treating students fairly (i.e., procedural and interactional justice), preferred to use more referent and expert power and less antisocial BATs in their classrooms.

Power Research Since 2010

The most recent investigations (i.e., since 2010) on teachers’ influence in the classroom have moved away from examining individual teacher BATs and have reverted to studying the five original power bases (e.g., Chesebro & Martin, 2010; Goodboy, Bolkan, Myers, & Zhao, 2011; Horan, Martin, & Weber, 2012). Arguably, this trend could be attributed to the creation of new instruments designed to assess observable teacher behaviors that convey the five power bases in the educational context (c.f., Roach, 1995a; Schrodt, Witt, & Turman, 2007). Using these scales, particularly Schrodt et al.’s Teacher Power Use Scale (TPUS), researchers over the last five years have predominately sought to (a) examine the associations that exist between power use and related teacher behaviors and perceptions (e.g., Finn, 2012; Finn & Ledbetter, 2013; Pytlak & Houser, 2014); (b) diversify the types of student responses that are studied in reaction to teacher power (e.g., Goodboy & Bolkan, 2011; Horan, Houser, Goodboy, & Frymier, 2011; Rudick & Martin, 2011); and (c) introduce various theoretical explanations of teacher power and offer initial validation for these perspectives by using model-testing procedures (e.g., Finn & Ledbetter, 2013; Good-boy et al., 2011; Horan et al., 2012).

Since 2010, researchers have shown a repeated interest in examining the relationships that exist between teacher power use, perceived credibility, and other teacher behaviors that foster learning in the classroom. This interest has uncovered a positive correlation between prosocial power (i.e., referent, reward, expert) and teacher credibility (i.e., competence, caring, trustworthiness) and a negative association between antisocial power and credibility (Finn & Ledbetter, 2013; Pytlak & Houser, 2014). Moreover, recent investigations have also revealed that teachers who use prosocial power also tend to employ other effective behaviors in their classes including teacher confirmation (Horan et al., 2011), understanding (Finn, 2012) and conversation skills (Horan et al., 2011). Combined, these findings suggest that effective teachers know how to use power in conjunction with other teaching behaviors to elicit students’ compliance and enhance student learning.

Recent years have also brought about changes regarding how researchers study students’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to power. Rudick and Martin (2011) discovered that teachers’ power use influences students’ perceived face threats in the classroom; specifically, power that induces feelings of guilt and legitimacy was revealed to be most threatening to students’ positive and negative face. Using a scenario-based experiment in which the framing of power messages was manipulated via hypothetical syllabi, Chesebro and Martin (2010) found that students are more likely to experience anger when they are presented with minimal choices for their classroom experiences and perceive their instructor as using legitimate and coercive power. Likewise, Horan et al. (2011) uncovered a negative relationship between teachers’ use of antisocial power (i.e., coercive, legitimate) at the beginning of a semester and students’ predicted outcome value for the remainder of the course, indicating that even brief displays of power can alter students’ perceptions of their learning experiences. Recent findings from Goodboy and colleagues (Goodboy & Bolkan, 2011; Goodboy et al., 2011) have suggested that teachers’ power use not only influences students’ attitudes and perceptions, but also their classroom behaviors and the way in which they communicate with their instructor. For instance, Goodboy and Bolkan (2011) found that students are more likely to communicate with their instructor for excuse-making and sycophantic reasons when their instructor uses coercive power and lacks expert power in the classroom. These motives likely translate to actual communication behaviors, as Good-boy et al. (2011) observed that teachers’ use of power also influences students’ own compliance-gaining attempts, affinity-seeking strategies, and communication satisfaction.

To explain the various associations that exist between teacher power use and student classroom responses, researchers have most recently started incorporating a broad range of theories into the instructional context. For instance, instructional scholars have adopted theories such as the social influence model (Finn & Ledbetter, 2013), predicted outcome value theory (Horan et al., 2011), and politeness theory (Rudick & Martin, 2011) into the communication literature in order to better understand the influence of power on student attitudes and behaviors. Scholars have also incorporated two theoretical perspectives developed originally by communication researchers (Mottet, Frymier, & Beebe, 2006) to explain the effects of teacher power on student outcomes: the theory of relational power and instructional influence (Finn, 2012; Goodboy et al., 2011; Pytlak & Houser, 2014) and emotional response theory (ERT; Horan et al., 2012). To evaluate the utility of such frameworks, many of these investigations have relied heavily on model-testing procedures such as structural equational modeling and path analysis. In general, a majority of these attempts have produced poor-fitting models or have required significant modifications that are not consistent with the theoretical test or proposed model (Finn & Ledbetter, 2013; Goodboy et al., 2011; Horan et al., 2012), suggesting that these theoretical perspectives do not adequately explain how power operates in the classroom.

Measurement of Teacher Power and Compliance-Gaining

Similar to the overall body of research, the measurement of teacher power has also developed significantly over the last several decades. Early work used the Perceived Power Measure (PPM; McCroskey & Richmond, 1983), which describes each power base and then asks respondents to indicate their agreement using bipolar scales. McCroskey and Richmond (1983) described this measure as capturing power “in an absolute rather than a relative form” (p. 179). The Relative Power Measure (RPM; McCroskey & Richmond, 1983), which was developed in conjunction with the PPM (i.e., they were designed to be used together), also describes each power base, but respondents estimate from 0 to 100% how much power is used from each base (the total percentage must add up to 100 across all five bases). The Power Base Measure (Roach, 1995a) uses 20 statements (4 for each power base) that describe reasons for compliance using a 5-point Likert-type scale (e.g., “the student should comply to please the instructor”). Most recently, the Teacher Power Use scale (TPUS; Schrodt et al., 2007) uses 30 behavioral indicators and a Likerttype scale (e.g., “my teacher publicly recognizes students who exceed expectations in course performance”) to measure observable power bases in the classroom. BATs have been measured using the typology as a compliance-gaining checklist with accompanying BAMs (Kearney et al., 1984) which performs reliably (Roach, 1990).

Outside of the Communication Studies discipline, Psychology and Education researchers interested in teacher power (e.g., Elias, 2007; Elias & Mace, 2005; Erchul, Raven, & Ray, 2001; Erchul, Raven, & Whichard, 2001) have relied on the Interpersonal Power Inventory (IPI; Raven, Schwarzwald, & Koslowsky, 1998) to measure the original French and Raven (1959) power bases, and they have extended differentiations of these bases (see Raven, 1993 for the origins, developments, and further differentiations and elaborations on the bases of the social power model). The IPI consists of 33 items (sometimes 44 items), uses a Likert-type format, and measures the following differentiated power bases: reward impersonal, coercive impersonal, expert, referent, informational, legitimacy-position, legitimacy-reciprocity, legitimacy-dependence, legitimacy-equity, personal reward, and personal coercion.

Criticisms and Controversy in Compliance-Gaining

Like all good science, which is riddled with criticism and controversy, research on power and compliance-gaining has spawned significant academic debate. Early scholars were particularly critical of the compliance-gaining literature because of the methodologies that were used; subsequently, these criticisms were later extended to the research on teacher power, sparking a considerable controversy within the field of communication. The origins of this controversy can be traced back to Burleson et al. (1988), who noted that research on compliance-gaining relies almost exclusively on one of two procedures: the selection(ist) procedure (i.e., giving participants a list of compliance-gaining messages they might use and asking them to report on the frequency in which they use them) and the construction(ist) procedure (i.e., asking participants to create their own compliance-gaining messages). From a methodological perspective, Burleson et al. argued that selection procedures, which rely on pre-formulated checklists of compliance-gaining strategies, suffer from an item desirability bias that yields (a) little variation in participant responses, (b) high social desirability, and (c) predictable responses based on the social appropriateness of individual items. Burleson et al. discovered some evidence of item desirability in compliance-gaining checklists through a series of seven studies. From these investigations they concluded that compliance-gaining studies that rely solely on the selection procedure “tell us only which strategies are perceived as more and less socially appropriate, and not which strategies people are more and less likely to use in particular situations” (Burleson et al., 1988, p. 478). They urged researchers to abandon selection procedures in future research because these findings have yielded “10 years of questionable effort in the compliance-gaining area” (Burlseon et al., 1988, p. 479).

Not surprisingly, Burleson et al.’s (1988) bold claims generated controversy within the compliance-gaining literature and inspired numerous academic rebuttals; as such, a colloquy was started, and three direct responses to Burleson and his colleagues challenged their claims. First, Seibold (1988) responded to Burleson et al. and argued these scholars did not actually prove that selection procedures suffered from item desirability, nor did they provide evidence to support that construction procedures were more valid assessments of real-world behavior. Seibold also highlighted the empirical evidence that Burleson et al. would need to make their claims and concluded that researchers “should accept neither Burleson and colleagues’ conclusion about the invalidity of the selection procedure nor their claims for the construction methods’ concurrent validity” (1988, p. 159).

Second, Hunter (1988) responded by claiming that Burleson et al. (1988) were incorrect because their social desirability argument did not adequately explain their findings. Specifically, Hunter questioned why a participant would rate a compliance-gaining message as undesirable, but then also report using the very same message to elicit compliance. Hunter statistically demonstrated that the aforementioned case of a participant reporting the use of undesirably-rated compliancegaining strategies occurred in Burleson et al.’s data. As an alternative explanation, Hunter argued that social judgement theory better explained Burleson and colleagues’ findings. Hunter claimed that people are biased by their own positions and behaviors and that “the theory predicts only a bias in perception; a tendency to perceive the behavior as less negative than others see it,” prompting the conclusion that “Burleson et al. have misinterpreted their results … [as] there is no evidence to suggest that choice compliance-gaining message instruments are subject to ‘social desirability bias’” (Hunter, 1988, p. 168).

Third, Boster (1988) responded to Burleson et al. (1988) by pointing out that people typically use compliance-gaining messages they deem to be socially appropriate, which “poses no threat to the validity of compliance-gaining message selection tasks” (p. 170). Boster argued that the correlations Burleson et al. reported cannot imply causality and that the messages themselves might be driving the ratings of social desirability. Boster invoked evidence from self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance theory to argue that the selection of compliance-gaining messages is an antecedent to social desirability; “once a message is endorsed or eschewed, the account of the choice must be that it was socially desirable, if chosen, or socially undesirable, if rejected, for the raters to construe and present their actions as favorable” (Boster, 1988, p. 172).

After being criticized by Seibold (1988), Hunter, (1988), and Boster (1988), Burleson and Wilson (1988) further defended their position that selection procedures were flawed, and they responded to these criticisms at length by reiterating that “at a minimum … researchers should not assume that data yielded by the selection procedure tell us anything about compliance-gaining in the real world” (p. 189). The articles cited in this colloquy are lengthy, and we encourage readers to fully read each of the authors’ opinions and arguments. It is not our intention to support one particular argument over another, but we hope that by highlighting these discussions, readers can turn to this debate and decide for themselves as to whether or not compliance-gaining selection procedures are valid measurement choices in light of the arguments reviewed.

Compliance-Gaining Controversy with Teacher Power

Criticisms raised from the Burleson et al. (1988) study also caused a direct response from teacher power researchers. Almost exclusively, instructional communication scholars have employed a selection procedure to study teacher BATs (e.g., Kearney & Plax, 1987; McCroskey et al., 1985; Plax et al., 1986), which is the same procedure that Burleson et al. (1988) ask researchers to “eschew” (p. 479). Unsurprisingly, then, Burleson et al.’s recommendation to stop using a selection/checklist procedure resulted in numerous responses from instructional communication researchers at the time. Sorensen, Plax, and Kearney (1989) first responded as they asked 68 elementary school teachers to use the constructionist approach as recommended by Burleson and colleagues. They created a new coding scheme for teachers’ compliance-gaining strategies (based on 567 original responses) and noted that their results “suggest that the two methods, selectionist and constructionist, are functionally equivalent” and “support those [findings] reported in previous studies employing the BAT checklist” (Sorenson et al., 1989, p. 115). Their study provided no evidence to suggest that using selectionist procedures to study BATs produces any more valid data akin to what teachers use in the real world. Plax, Kearney, and Sorensen (1990) expanded on this claim of functional equivalence by again using constructionist procedures to examine prospective and experienced teachers’ use of compliance-gaining messages. Comparing selectionist and constructionist methodologies, Plax et al. found no differences in the frequency of reported prosocial and antisocial BATs. They concluded that “at best, our results suggest that the construction procedure will provide data ‘similar’ to those obtained with strategy checklists … at worse, the construction procedure fails the test of equivalence” (Plax et al., 1990, p. 139).

Several years later, Waltman (1994) brought up the constructionist/selectionist debate again and questioned the use of the BATs checklist as a valid measure of teachers’ compliance-gaining techniques. Waltman argued that most teachers over-report their use of prosocial strategies in the checklist contradicting “50 years of observational studies of teachers’ naturally-occurring discipline behavior … [which] indicate that teachers use, almost exclusively, negative and antisocial discipline strategies to correct student misbehavior” (1994, p. 296). Waltman never cited these observational studies; however, he suggested that the BATs checklist is invalid and suffers from an item desirability bias in which teachers over-report prosocial BATs and underreport antisocial BATs. To support these claims, Waltman sampled teachers and observers in 32 classrooms and looked for an over-reporting bias from teachers. He did not find support for his hypothesis, but he did note that student and teacher reports of BAT use were frequently uncorrelated (c.f., McCroskey & Richmond, 1983). Thus, he noted that “while it may not be claimed that the BATs checklist has failed this test of convergent validity, it also may not be said it has passed this test of convergent validity” (Waltman, 1994, p. 304).

After failing to find empirical support for his position against the BATs checklist, Waltman (1995) attacked the discriminant validity of the checklist using the same item desirability argument. He reasoned that if BATs suffered from an item desirability bias, they should be correlated with social appropriateness scores. He found that almost all of the BATs reported by teachers were correlated positively with social appropriateness (with very large correlations observed between mean BAT use and mean social appropriateness). Waltman (1995) concluded that his findings served as evidence that individuals “provide their perceptions of the social appropriateness of the items on the BATs checklist when providing likelihood-of-use ratings rather than their perceptions of the likelihood they would use checklist items” (p. 209). He further purported that “50 years of research on teachers’ naturally occurring discipline strategies” (Waltman, 1995, p. 202) suggest that teachers prefer antisocial compliance messages, yet he once again failed to cite any of this research claiming that “a thorough review of this research is beyond the scope” of his investigation (p. 210).

Two years later, the criticism of BATs took a different approach as Waltman and Burleson (1997a) argued that the BATs checklist suffered from heuristic processing issues. Similar to their previous claims, Waltman and Burleson noted that the early compliance research provided a prosocial response pattern to the BATs checklist, indicating an item desirability bias within the literature. This time, however, they argued that heuristic processing (i.e., a politeness heuristic) might be the culprit. “Heuristics refer to cognitive shortcuts or rules of thumb which individuals employ to reduce the cognitive burden of decision-making tasks” (Waltman & Burleson, 1997a, p. 80). Waltman and Burleson extrapolated the conditions that might lead participants to rely on heuristics including tasks that (a) require a high load for processing but are relatively unimportant and (b) tasks that possess a time-pressure element. They argued that since the BATs checklist requires participants to read, interpret, and process 22 unique BATs and consider whether or not they use each BAT (across multiple scenarios in some studies; e.g., Kearney et al., 1988), they likely find this task as unimportant, highly redundant, burdensome, and time-consuming. Thus, these scholars argued that participants use decision-making heuristics based on politeness to respond to all 22 BATs. To evaluate these claims, Waltman and Burleson conducted an experiment in which they manipulated the conditions for heuristic responding. Participants in a control group responded to all 22 BATs across four hypothetical scenarios used by Kearney and Plax (1987). Participants in the experimental group (i.e., decreased heuristic processing group) only responded to one of the four hypothetical conditions and only three or four BATs, instead of all 22 compliance-gaining techniques. Participants in the experimental group were also told to take as much time as they needed and to really think about each task as they were important (thus reducing cognitive load, decreasing time pressure, and increasing importance). A manipulation check revealed that participants in the experimental condition found the checklist to be less monotonous and complicated, and more thought-provoking. However, the manipulation check failed to identify a difference in perceptions of involvement and importance between the experimental and control group. Waltman and Burleson found significantly weaker correlations between BAT use and social appropriateness scores in the experimental condition, compared to the control condition. They also found that participants in the experimental condition were more likely to use certain antisocial BATs and were less likely to use certain prosocial BATs. Waltman and Burleson concluded that although researchers should not necessarily reject the selection procedure, they should make data collection procedures more cognitively engaging to avoid a politeness heuristic problem where teachers over-report prosocial and underreport antisocial BATs.

Kearney and Plax (1997) replied to Waltman and Burleson (1997a) and called their claims “misinformed” because there is “no single study that demonstrates that teachers are mostly or even typically negative or antisocial in their compliance-gaining attempts” (p. 96). Kearney and Plax argued that Waltman and Burleson were confusing the conceptual idea of BATs with teacher desist and reinforcement techniques. They also mentioned that every study on BATs conducted, despite whether the participants sampled were students, teachers, or colleagues, revealed that teachers use more prosocial than antisocial BATs. Kearney and Plax discussed how prosocial BATs are preferred because they are more effective in eliciting students’ compliance, and that prosocial BATs are considered more socially appropriate. Kearney and Plax also drew attention to the fact that Waltman and Burleson’s (1997a) manipulation was not successful for perceived involvement and importance of the task, while noting that the sample relied only on undergraduate education majors who did not have any actual experience managing a classroom. Kearney and Plax further criticized Waltman and Burleson’s statistical comparisons of summed BAT means that are standardized and restandardized for comparative purposes and concluded by asking “to what extent does the Waltman and Burleson study contribute to our understanding of what teachers actually do or say to manage their students in the classroom” (Kearney & Plax, 1997, p. 98). Their answer to this question was a resounding “nothing” (p. 99); and they “remain[ed] convinced of the utility and validity of researchers’ use of the BAT checklist” (p. 99).

Waltman and Burleson (1997b) replied with the final commentary on this debate and defended their manipulation check, as three of the five conditions were successfully manipulated. They also defended their sample and experimental considerations. They concluded that “it may be possible to modify the BATs checklist, as well as other strategy selection instruments, so that they provide more valid assessments of the constructs they are intended to assess” (Waltman & Burleson, 1997b, p. 103).

Beyond the back and forth colloquy presented in this chapter, there have been other criticisms of teacher power research that have relied on social science investigations. Advocating a critical autoethnography approach to studying power, Wood and Fassett (2003) pointed out that the research on BATs has predominately operated “from a social scientific model that privileges prediction and control, such work does not explore the phenomenon of power in situ”; moreover, Wood and Fassett claimed that by promoting “students and teachers as objectives for manipulation, this line of research casts these agents as disembodied and disconnected from one other” (p. 291). In an effort to expand the instructional communication agenda, Sprague (1992a) also criticized the power in the classroom series as being limited by social science; she noted, “a perusal of this series of studies yields a misleadingly simple picture of classroom life: teachers need to use power effectively in order to keep students on task so that learning can occur” (p. 14). Sprague argued that power is not just another tool for teachers to use and that power affects students beyond the confines of the classroom. She maintained that a more comprehensive understanding of power is needed and asked a series of important questions that still remain unanswered by instructional communication scholars over 20 years later:

If power is not a harmless tool used by some people to manipulate others for the latter’s own good, but a subtle and pervasive social force, who deserves to be given power over students? Who decides to what ends that power should be used? How can we as communication scholars penetrate the complexity of power in classroom life and sensitize teachers and students to the alternatives they have in its use? (Sprague, 1992a, p. 17).

Sprague (1992b) advocated a critical perspective by pointing out that “within this view, teachers’ actions cannot be understood by analyzing decontextualized slices of their classroom behavior” (p. 182). She critically summarized the powerlessness that teachers have in their classrooms, including the low status and working conditions of teachers and the feminization, technologizing, deskilling, intensification, and privatization of teachers’ work. In this way, Sprague discussed teacher power from a different lens – as becoming empowered by rediscovering collegiality through collaboration, reorganizing schools to have shared leadership, reclaiming the teaching profession through a transformative vision, and ultimately, reforming teacher education.

Rodríguez and Cai (1994) responded to Sprague’s (1992a) criticisms of the power in the classroom research and pointed out that these studies adopted a covering laws perspective. They also noted that applying a critical perspective to these works is inappropriate because they have different assumptions about how research is conducted. Rodríguez and Cai (1994) explained that “the covering law and critical approaches should be seen as two unique and important epistemologies … [and] we must refrain from allowing our epistemological differences to undermine the relative importance and usefulness of particular research findings” (p. 270).

Sprague (1994) was invited to respond to Rodríguez and Cai’s (1994) assertions, and she provided a lengthy explanation for the limitations of using a covering laws perspective to study power. She argued that Rodríguez and Cai’s call for scholarly separatism between social science and critical perspectives is unwarranted. Despite paradigmatic differences, Sprague observed that scholarly dialogue from the critical perspective can challenge other research from a different paradigm; she explained, “the right to challenge someone else’ scholarship does not depend on who the challenger is” (Sprague, 1994, p. 282). Sprague rightly pointed out that almost all of the power in the classroom research has been guided by one (social science) perspective, which has limited offerings to other fields, and most importantly, limited utility for teachers. She explained that “by becoming encapsulated in a single perspective, scholars limit the ways they see problems and therefore the ways they might come to understand them” (Sprague, 1994, p. 285).

Collectively, these lengthy controversies and criticisms are important commentaries in the history of teacher compliance-gaining as they provide researchers with decisions to make when conducting future research on power in the classroom. Although the empirical examination of power has spawned programmatic research on how teachers use (and abuse) power in the classroom, we urge future researchers to apply multiple perspectives to investigate teacher power. We also hope that researchers in future decades will reexamine, reconceptualize, and replicate research on the important construct of teacher power.

Recommendations

In this chapter we have reviewed a significant body of work detailing the exhaustive history of teacher power and its program of research within the instructional communication literature. We now provide three recommendations for future scholars who want to continue this line of research and offer suggestions to aid those who may desire to implement these ideas. Our first recommendation is to update the BATs/BAMs typology and the measurement of teachers’ compliancegaining strategies. Over 30 years have passed since this seminal research has been conducted, and the classroom has evolved substantially over that time (e.g., because of the reliance on technology and Internet, the culture of higher education, and the changing expectations of students; c.f., Goodboy & Myers, 2015). Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that the BATs and BAMs teachers use to gain student compliance have also changed since the seminal investigations that took place decades ago. However, it is also likely that teachers today rely on some of the identical BATs that were used in the 1980s (e.g., reward and punishment related BATs). Therefore, we specifically urge scholars to empirically replicate the Power III (Kearney et al., 1985) and Power IV (Kearney et al., 1984) investigations to determine how BATs are used in present-day classrooms. Moreover, we strongly encourage that researchers reexamine BATs across contexts and levels of education (e.g., preschool, K-12, vocational school, college, graduate school, online) as it is likely that teachers/ instructors adapt their compliance-gaining strategies to fit the learning environment in which they work (Kearney et al., 1985).

Our second recommendation is to expand the teacher power research by acknowledging interdisciplinary scholarship that is conducted outside the discipline of Communication Studies. For instance, instructional communication scholars have relied solely on measures developed within their discipline and have not consulted, or even acknowledged, theoretical advancements of social power bases. Moreover, instructional scholars have repeatedly cited French and Raven (1959) for their theoretical frameworks (see Waldeck, Kearney, & Plax, 2001), even though the bases of social power have been refined and expanded, and newer theoretical models have been developed (e.g., Koslowsky & Schwarzfield, 2001; Raven, 1992, 1993, 2001; Raven et al., 1998). Instructional communication scholars have simply failed to keep up with the literature on which the teacher power research was originally based, and they continue to cite work published only in Communication Studies, while ignoring important and relevant findings of teacher power from other disciplines (e.g., Elias, 2007). Confining teacher power and compliance-gaining to one field (i.e., Communication Studies) is inexcusable. Therefore, we encourage future scholars to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration in order to advance a more holistic understanding of power in the classroom. For instance, the field of instructional communication shares historical and conceptual similarities with various areas of development (e.g., lifespan development, college student development; see Nussbaum & Friedrich, 2005) that could be drawn upon to better comprehend how teachers gain compliance from students who operate from different levels of cognitive, ethical, and/or psychosocial maturity (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). We suggest that future instructional communication research use these disciplinary parallels, while referencing the advancements made in social psychology, to improve the conceptual, operational, and theoretical treatment of power and compliance-gaining.

Our third recommendation is to expand teacher power research beyond a social science perspective. Power is not simply a tool that is limited to five bases and 22 BATs (Stewart, Wheeless, & Barraclough, 1984). In fact, “in attempting to reduce power to a tool or skill set, instructional communication researchers have, in effect, cast student … resistance as deviance, as decontextualized (mis)behaviors that, at first blush, may seem arbitrary or irrational”; moreover, by taking such an approach, instructional scholars have failed “to call out the ways in which student resistance might be (dis)organized against an authority that objectifies them for the purpose of order and compliance” (Fassett & Warren, 2007, p. 42). Clearly, power is pervasive and complex, which makes the critical perspective ideal for understanding it (Wood & Fassett, 2003). A critical perspective may also be best for examining power as an expression of one’s identity. For example, Rudoe (2010) examined lesbian teachers’ identity management and power in the heterosexualized context of school in Westernized cultures. Ultimately, we echo Sprague’s (1992, 1994) claims that power in the classroom may be a reflection of power in society – that it can be an oppressive force that engrains into students an unbalanced social hierarchy – and we wonder what we can do as teachers to use power more appropriately, and how to reclaim power that is unduly subjugated. Of course, we imagine that others also contemplate similar ideas and may have very different opinions on compliance-gaining and the current state of research that surrounds the subject. Therefore, we suggest that instructional communication scholars from diverse backgrounds, including both critical and post-positive paradigms, share their views on this research and their suggestions about how to improve it through a scholarly forum or colloquy, similar to those that initiated comparable conversations several decades ago (c.f., Boster, 1988; Hunter, 1988; Seibold, 1988; Sprague, 1994). Put simply, instructional communication research could benefit tremendously if future investigations were to embrace diverse perspectives on power, including a more critical examination of compliance-gaining in the classroom, as the field seeks to resolve some of Sprague’s (1992a) important, yet still unanswered questions.

Conclusion

Thirty years of teacher power and compliance-gaining scholarship have yielded one of the few programmatic areas of research in instructional communication (Myers, 2010). This body of literature serves the everyday teacher by “helping her or him put communication toward effective classroom management … [and] clarifying the complexities of power, in part to help someone acquire skills s/he may not possess intuitively” (Fassett & Warren, 2007, p. 42). This impressive body of research has reminded teachers and scholars alike that power is perceptual, negotiated, and serves to enhance or detract from the learning environment. This program also reminds us to be effective educators who help students learn through the appropriate use of prosocial compliance-gaining strategies, as “the abuse of power by teachers is probably more resented by students than any other single thing a teacher can do” (Hurt et al., 1978, p. 126).

In short, teacher power and compliance-gaining studies have yielded some of the most pedagogical and applicable findings in the instructional communication literature. Yet, like all research, it is crucial that this program continue to evolve around the demands of today’s students and teachers in order to advance our understanding of power and compliance-gaining in the 21st-century classroom. We are excited to see this research program unfold another 30 years from now.

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