Faculty-Student Interaction and Student Learning

Interaction on college campuses consists primarily of behavioral exchanges within and between three groups: students, faculty, and administrators. The nature of these exchanges has altered a number of times since the early days of European universities, when students virtually dominated university life, faculty members served pretty much at the pleasure of students, and ad ministrators were essentially lacking from the scene.11 More recent empirical accounts say little of student administrator interaction (except in crisis situations) and tend to conceptualize faculty-student interaction in terms of classroom issues (e.g., teaching innovation, teacher qualities, and how they relate to student learn ing). The ongoing attempt to make faculty-student inter action a classroom phenomenon has been stressed and institutionalized by universities partly because it pro vides a comfortab'e way of handling many of the strains and demands arising with respect to university life. Emphasizing the classroom aspects of education, for example, provides universities with an efficient and relatively helpful means for controlling student be havior. It allows faculty members to structure and limit the contact they have with students so that it does not interfere with their commitment to the pressures of scholarship and writing. It allows the administration to evaluate the influence the university has had on student learning in terms of the relative'y simple measures de rived from classroom performance, rather than having to face up to the complicated problem of justifying the university's total performance vis a vis the student. For the student, it is an easy way to know how one stands in terms of those credentials needed to obtain a good job after graduation. In spite of attempts made by interested faculty and students to broaden intellectual exchange on campus and to structure learning in areas that might have additional learning impact, Bolton and Kammeyer point out that institutional attempts to structure student intellectual interactions se1 dorn go beyond departmental clubs, teas with faculty members, and ''awkward meet ings in which faculty members are invited to dinner with students with the aim of stimulating some subse quent student discussion."4 Recent events on many campuses have highlighted what we have always known but not often verbalized, namely that both faculty and students are social beings with a variety of motives and personal hang-ups and not just academic role players. Existing institutionalized faculty-student role relationships have been attacked by many students and some faculty who see such relation ships as standing in the way of creating learning environ ments where faculty and students can relate on both a task and non-task oriented level with respect to mutually relevant personal and social problems. Social change in education reflects an effort on the part of some students to find something "meaningful" or "relevant" in their relationships with university aca demicians. This effort imp'ies that many on campus are unwilling to settle for a classroom oriented educa tion which simply provides credentials for future job opportunities. They are looking for a chance to do what many academicians have always held as a university ideal: faculty-student dialogs about issues relating to changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving which have influence, not only on the future actions of the student in some job, but on the total growth and development of the student as an individual. Sanford feels that faculty members should respond to this challenge by seeing students as not only receptors of knowledge but also a "condition" that cries out for change. The student is likely to be characterized by "prejudice and narrowness of outlook, shallow and transitory interest, lack of crea tive phantasy and foresight, want of discipline in think ing." These have been derived from childhood experi ences. Unless the student is educated, this condition will persist."15 The values reflected in the type of humanistic edu cation described by Sanford have led to examining the feasibility of faculty-student involvement in an increas ing number of non-formal learning situations. Whereas classrooms and, to a lesser degree, research laboratories and field situations have traditionally been seen as relevant arenas in which to examine faculty-student in teraction, the demands for relevant experience and the increased emphasis on unstructured learning situations have extended the scope of areas considered appropriate to learning. University committees, office, lounges, pri vate houses, and other less formal settings are providing many of the environments in which academic learning can become more exciting and can relate to the actors' social and personal as well as academic concerns.14 The major finding by Bolton and Kammeyer is that the peer group aspect of student life does not generally support the manifest educational function of the uni versity.4 The attempts on many campuses to conceive of many additional areas as legitimate settings for intel 27