Studies in Higher Education Volume 17, No. 1, 1992 21

Faculty Perceptions of College Classroom Environment GEORGE M. DIEKHOFF Midwestern State University

PHIL K. WIGGINTON Temple Junior College

ABSTRACT Classroom environment, the psychosociat milieu of the classroom, has been studied actively for over two decades. Ignored in this work, though, have been studies of college faculty perceptions of classroom environment. The present research examined 31 college professors" perceptions of their large freshman and sophomore lecture classes as well as the professors" self- perceptions using ratings on 26 Semantic Differential rating scales. Professors" self ratings and class ratings showed significant positive correlations both at the beginning and at the end of a semester. It is concluded that perceptions of classroom environment are linked to self- perceptions. The large college classroom appears to be sufficiently ambiguous that professors' perceptions of classroom environment reflect a self-projecting tendency.

Classroom environment, the psychosocial milieu of the classroom, is the focus of a considerable international research effort. For over two decades, researchers have examined classroom environment both as an outcome measure and as an antecedent variable (see Fraser, 1986a, 1986b for an overview of this literature).

A few researchers (e.g. Lentz & Shapiro, 1986) have attempted to measure classroom environment objectively, in terms of behavioural frequency counts, seating arrangements, and the like. More often, though, classroom environment is measured subjectively, using rating scales like the Learning Environment Inventory (Anderson & Walberg, 1974), the Classroom Environment Scale (Moos & Trickett, 1974) the Individualised Classroom Environment Questionnaire (Rentoul & Fraser, 1979), or the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (Fraser et al., 1986). Fraser, in particular, has been a vocal advocate of the subjective approach to assessing classroom environment. Among other advantages, he has noted that it is the perception of a situation that governs behaviour in that situation, not the objective reality.

The lion's share of the research on classroom environment has been conducted at the primary and secondary grade levels and has focused on students' perceptions. In contrast, primary and secondary level teachers' perceptions have received scant attention, and the perceptions of college level teachers are virtually unexplored. This is surprising, since teacher perceptions would be expected to affect teacher satisfaction and motivation levels, the quality and type of instruction provided to students, evaluations of student achievement,

22 G. M. Diekhoff & P. K. Wigginton

and a variety of other educational variables. The research reported here was designed to explore the classroom environment perceptions of teachers at the college level.

We were particularly interested in examining the subjectivity of perceptions of class- room environment among college faculty. Professors routinely describe their classes as 'friendly', 'eager' and 'motivated', or 'lazy', 'sluggish' and 'disinterested'. But how accurate are these perceptions? To what degree do professors' own characteristics influence their perceptions? This is an important question. To the extent that professors' perceptions of their classes are faulty, their behaviour in those classes will be inappropriate. Compounding the problem, college professors typically have no means of checking the accuracy of their perceptions.

That instructor perceptions of classroom environment should be influenced by subjec- tive factors seems self-evident. It is a well established principle of perception that observer characteristics play a major role in shaping perceptions of complex, ambiguous stimuli (Marlin, 1988; Goldstein, 1989). Certainly, a classroom full of college students fits this description. The literature of social cognition, too, points to the influence of self-perception on the perception of others. Our tendency is to organise our perceptions of others along the same dimensions that are most salient in our perceptions of self (Riggs & Cantor, 1974; Markus, 1977; O'Mahony, 1984). The individual whose excess weight is a salient part of his self-image, for instance, will tend to look closely at and define others in terms of their weight. Similarly, the woman who defines herself in terms of her superior intellect will tend to look first at the dimension of intelligence in getting to know others.

There have been various suggestions as to why we pursue this strategy of viewing others through the filter of our own self-concepts. Cantor (1976) has proposed that we attend to self-salient characteristics when perceiving others because the ability of these others to fulfil our needs depends on their being either similar or complementary to ourselves. Hirschberg & Jennings (1980) have suggested that " . . . what we esteem or are ashamed of about ourselves gives us a clue about the worth of other people" (p. 247). Markus & Smith (1981) list stimulus generalisation, projection, and the desire clearly to differentiate oneself from others as sources of the tendency to perceive others along the same dimensions that are important to our self-concepts. Fong & Markus (1982) argue that possessing a particular characteristic makes one something of an expert about that trait. As an expert about a self-salient trait, people may choose when dealing with others " . . . to seek information related to their self-schemas because their expertise enables them to better understand such information" (p. 202). They conclude that, "In the course of social interaction, self-schemas influence person perception by guiding and constraining the information gathering process in such a manner that self-relevant information is selected" (p. 203).

The issue, then, is not whether college professors' self-perceptions influence perceptions of their classes, but how strongly this influence exerts itself. The research reported here was designed to address this issue.

Methodology

Subjects

Subjects in the study were 31 faculty members of a mid-sized university (5500 students) in the south-west United States. These professors were selected on the basis of two criteria: (a) they taught relatively large, freshman or sophomore level lecture-style classes (e.g. freshman history, introductory psychology, human biology), and (b) collectively, they represented all divisions of the university.

Classroom Environment 23

Procedure

Surveys were mailed to 40 professors during the second and fourteenth weeks of a 16-week semester. Each survey consisted of two sections, the first designed to assess the faculty member's perception of one of his/her lecture classes, and the second designed to measure self-concept. The first survey was distributed before professors could be expected to be familiar with their classes. This strategy provided an opportunity for professors to demon- strate any projection of self-characteristic attributes in describing their classes. The second survey provided for an examination of the reliability of instructor self-ratings, the stability of their classroom environment ratings, and any changes in the relationship between self- perception and perception of classroom environment over the course of a semester's time. Thirty-one professors returned both surveys and all analyses reported here are based on returns from these individuals.

The first section of each survey asked professors to rate a specified class on a series of 26 bipolar, 7-point rating scales drawn from the Semantic Differential Scale (Osgood et al., 1957): good/bad, beautiful/ugly, hard/soft, strong/weak, calm/agitated, valuable/worthless, young/old, kind/cruel, loud/soft, deep/shallow, pleasant/unpleasant, happy/sad, sharp/ dull, ferocious/peaceful, relaxed/tense, brave/cowardly, rich/poor, nice/awful, honest/dis- honest, active/passive, rough/smooth, fresh/stale, fast/slow, fair/unfair, rugged/delicate, healthy/sick. We wished to include as many scales as possible from the Semantic Differen- tial in recognition of the multidimensional nature of self-perception and perception of classroom environment. At the same time, scale selection was constrained by the need to include only those scales possessing at least moderate face validity both for ratings of self and ratings of classroom environment. In making their ratings, professors were instructed to 'try to think of the class as a whole' and to 'describe your impressions of the class at this point in the semester'.

The second section of each survey asked the professors to use the same Semantic Differential scales listed above to describe themselves. Using the same set of rating scales to describe both classroom environment and self enabled an assessment to be made of the correlation between self-perception and perception of classroom environment on directly comparable dimensions.

Results

Self Ratings

Instructor self ratings were quite reliable over the course of the semester. Across the 31 professors, the mean test-retest correlation was 0.69, with a standard deviation of 0.24. Only one instructor's test-retest reliability was negative ( r= - -0 .23) . A Pearson correlation of 0.69 based on 26 data points (recall that these correlations were computed from ratings on 26 attribute scales) is significant at less than the 0.0005 level.

Classroom Environment Ratings

Ratings of classroom environment were also fairly stable over time. Across the 31 professors, the mean correlation between classroom ratings obtained at the beginning and end of the semester was 0.55, with a standard deviation of 0.26. Only one instructor produced a

24 G. M. Diekhoff & P. K. Wigginwn

negative correlation in this analysis (r = --0.22). A Pearson correlation of 0.55 based on 26 data points (again, 26 attribute scales) is significant at less than the 0.005 level.

Self-perception and Perception of Classroom Environment

For each professor, the relationship between self-perception and perception of classroom environment was quantified as the correlation between that professor's self ratings and his/her class ratings across the 26 Semantic Differential rating scales. Over the 31 professors, the mean correlation for ratings obtained at the beginning of the semester was 0.49, with a standard deviation of 0.28. Only two instructors yielded negative correlations (r = --0.37 and --0.17). A Pearson product-moment correlation of 0.49 based on 26 data points (26 attribute scales) is significant at less than the 0.01 level.

For data collected at the end of the semester, the mean correlation between self ratings and ratings of classroom environment was 0.50, with a standard deviation of 0.28. Only one professor yielded a negative correlation in this analysis (r = --0.18). A Pearson correlation of 0.50 based on 26 data points (26 attribute scales) is significant at less than the 0.01 level.

Discussion and Conclusions

Although studies of classroom environment abound, relatively little work has examined instructors' perceptions of their classes. A literature search yielded no prior studies of instructors' perceptions of classroom environment at the college level. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between college professors' perceptions of classroom environment and perceptions of themselves.

Data collected both at the beginning and at the end of one semester revealed statistically significant positive correlations between instructors' ratings of themselves and ratings of their classes across 26 Semantic Differential scales. We can conclude from this that, throughout the semester, faculty members tended to describe their classes in a manner similar to their self descriptions.

While this finding is consistent with projective and salient self-attribute accounts of social perception as described above, at least some of the similarly between self-ratings and class ratings may be due to shared method variance. Because self-perceptions and classroom environment perceptions were measured at the same times, along the same dimensions, using the same rating scale formats, one would anticipate some similarity in responses even in the absence of any perceived similarity between self and classroom environment. This method variance explanation, though, seems inadequate to explain all or even most of the observed linkage between self-perceptions and perceptions of classroom environment.

Given the established tendency to project self-salient attributes, we were not surprised to find at the beginning of the semester that self-perception and perception of classes were linked, particularly since professors were asked to describe classes which were still unfami- liar to them. What was surprising was the remarkable stability of the relationship between self-perception and classroom environment perception over the course of the semester. Prior to collecting these data, we anticipated that as instructors gained familiarity with their classes, they would begin to perceive classes more in terms of the actual characteristics of the classes and less in terms of projected self-characteristics (Gibson, 1969). That this did not happen suggests that the professors we studied never became particularly familiar with their classes. Perhaps this is not a surprising finding, given that the study focused on large lecture sections consisting mainly of freshmen and sophomores.

A number of interesting questions remain unanswered by the present investigation. First, how much of the linkage between self-perception and perception of classroom climate

Classroom Environment 25

seen in the present study can be attributed to shared method variance? Second, i f professors are inclined to see their classes as reflections o f themselves, do they see all o f their classes as pretty much the same, with little variation from one to the next? After all, one's image is pretty constant from one mirror to the next. Our data do not address this question since each professor described only one class. Third, do perceptions o f smaller classes differ from those o f large lecture classes? In particular, does a professor's perception o f small classes shift away from a self-reflecting tendency as familiarity with the students grows? Fourth, one wonders how much agreement would be found between two different professors' perceptions o f the same class. I f perceptions of classroom climate are strongly influenced by self- perception, one might see surprisingly litte agreement, with each professor seeing the classroom through the distorting filter of his/her own self-concept. Fifth, our findings bear in an interesting manner on the chronic tendency of some professors toward wholesale criticism and condemnation o f their students. Is this a problem with the students or with the faculty? How would an improved self-concept influence the classroom environment percep- tions o f these professors? Finally, what difference does it make how a professor sees his/her classes? How does this perception influence teaching practice and student reactions?

Correspondence: George M. Diekhoff, Professor o f Psychology, Midwestern State Univer- sity, Wichita Falls, T X 76308, USA.

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