Comparison of American and Chinese College Students' Perception of Instructor Authority

AbstractTeacher authority has long been recognized as one of the critical factors that contribute to the formation of effective learning circumstances (Haywood-Metz, 2006). A survey was developed based on Dornbusch and Scott's (1975) theoretical framework of distinction between formal authority and informal authority, named The Attitude towards College Instructor Authority (ACIA). By using this survey among Chinese and American students at an American University, the current study examines college students' perception of instructor authority, including their preference of formal or informal authority, the valued elements in instructor professional competence, as well as the relation between instructor's perceived demographic features and their authority power. The results indicate that overall students rely highly on instructors' position-attached formal authority rather than professionally- oriented informal authority. Whereas there are culture-specified differences between Chinese and American college students' valued dimension of instructors' professional competence at the informal authority level. Possible reasons for the similarities and differences are addressed.Key Words: Perception of instructor authority, cross-cultural comparison, authority relationTeacher authority is defined as the teachers' controllability and gaining of students' content within a learning environment (Oyler, 1996). Although it is argued by some progressive educators that classroom authority should be replaced by educational freedom in which students would fulfill their own needs spontaneously (Pace & Hermings, 2007), classroom teachers still need to present a certain form of authority to optimize their function of facilitating students with active construction of meaningful knowledge (Haywood- Metz, 2006). According to Kneller (1971), a successful teacher should obtain a minimum capacity to organize and direct the classroom activities, to be aware of students' needs and responses to the knowledge, and skillfully adopt the proper methodology.Teachers should never take their roles of authority for granted. It has been attested that students massively believe they share little interests with their teachers, and being disobedient is the natural way of persisting their independence (Richard, 2011). Waller (1961) maintained that authoritative relation between teacher and students is never ensured because of the "quivering" balance between teachers' performance and students' perception of the authorized power in the classroom (as cited in Pace and Hemmings, 2007).To investigate how and to what extent college instructors' professional and individual features impact students' perception of them as authority figures, and to compare the results cross-culturally in a western ideology-oriented country (the United States) and an eastern ideology-oriented country (the People's Republic of China), a survey - The Attitude towards College Instructor Authority (ACIA) was developed with the methodology of simultaneous bilingual scale design.ACIA was established based on Dornbusch and Scott's (1975) theoretical framework of distinction between formal and informal authority. Fourteen statements out of 24 statements of the original instrument were selected based on a pilot test of scale reliability and experts' suggestions. By launching the survey on a Chinese and an American university campus, the study aims to answer two levels of research questions: firstly, to what extent the two different legitimate domains of authority (formal and informal) account for college students' general attitudes towards their instructors as authority figure during the learning process; secondly, whether there are cultural-specified features guided by two different ideological systems( western and eastern) influencing the perceived weight of the two domains among American and Chinese college students. And if there are differences, what the potential causes could be and what kind of implication can be drawn for educators in diverse classrooms? …