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Understanding how relationships between instructors and students develop is important for understanding the undergraduate student experience. We expect the development of positive relationships is related to the social practices (e.g., greetings, using names, sympathizing, or empathizing with students) that instructors use in the course of normal classroom interactions with students. We recorded interactions between instructors and students in remote synchronous online physics problem-solving sessions and surveyed students about their perceptions of their instructors. We selected the highest-rated instructor and lowest-rated instructor in our sample and identified social practices in their conversations with students. We first characterized the frequency of social practice usage by each instructor in their conversations with students. We find that both instructors relied on a set of core social practices in most conversations with students, but that our higher-rated instructor used comparatively more positive commentary and sympathizing or empathizing behaviors than our lower-rated instructor. In comparison, our lower-rated instructor engaged in more negative commentary. Using network analysis, we then explored patterns in co-occurrences of social practices used by each instructor moment-to-moment in conversations and compared the instructors’ social practice network patterns. We find that our higher rated-instructor used a greater variety of social practices during moment-to-moment interactions with students, while our lower-rated instructor spent most of his time focused on classroom business. We suggest that professional development for instructors should include guidance on how messages are delivered in classes and encourage the use of high-impact social practices to foster positive relationships with students.
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This content will become publicly available on April 25, 2026
Startrack Holdings: a case of inclusive leadership and decision-making
Fictitious case study on sustainable business practices for use in business education. Teaching notes, templates and solutions are available on the online Instructor Resources available on the online Instructor Resources available on the book’s website at https://www.e-elgar.com/textbooks/cho-ustainability-accounting. Note that these are restricted and available to instructors only, and an account with access is required.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1921523
- PAR ID:
- 10649776
- Editor(s):
- Cho, Charles H; Costa, Erika; Korca, Blerita
- Publisher / Repository:
- Edward Elgar Publishing
- Date Published:
- Edition / Version:
- 1.0
- ISBN:
- 9781035330591
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 181-192
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Other: pdf
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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