| This thesis reports a constructivist case study of instructional communicating style in higher education. The participants were an award-winning, associate professor of Botany and a class of his students.;The study used a triangulated design (participant observation, interviewing, and surveys). Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed: (a) to construct a portrait of the teacher's instructional communicating style; (b) to place that portrait within a broader context of themes and systematic patterns in students' impressions of teachers; (c) to look for systematic relationships between the students' goals, accomplishments, and impressions of teachers.;It was concluded that the participating teacher, "Dr. Stephen Barton," had a rhetorical instructional communicating style. And, he taught in a manner that met his students' collective expectations for good teaching. Their RCQ impressions of Barton suggest that: He presented course material clearly and interestingly, interacted willingly and considerately with students, used fair and otherwise professionally appropriate policies to manage the course, and cared about his teaching.;Constructivist analysis revealed that, on average, students' impressions grew more differentiated and abstract over the semester. However, systematic differences among students' impressions and evaluations were also discovered, some of which were not explicable in terms of previous constructivist scholarship.;Relationships were also explored between students' goals, accomplishments, impressions, and Likert-scale evaluations of Barton. The results suggest that students' dissimilar experiences of teaching may be partly accounted for by differences in the personal goals they pursue, and how much they think the teacher helped them accomplish their goals.;After limitations of the study are discussed, implications for future research are explored: (a) a constructivist approach to instructional communicating style seems feasible and valuable; and (b) mentoring in the process of teacher socialization deserves future study. |
