Are Your Students Making a Good First Impression?

Dr. Barry Schlenker (University of Florida) is teaching a course this semester titled "Impression Management."  Dr. Schlenker has published numerous articles on the topic and defines impression management as "the goal-directed activity of controlling or regulating information in order to influence the impressions formed by an audience."  As he notes, we "simply cannot reveal everything about ourselves to a particular audience; it is impossible.  We must edit the information to make it germane to the occasion."

Part of having social skills is creating an accurate impression that will benefit us in our communications with bosses, teachers, students, colleagues, etc.  In other words, we try to make a good impression, to present ourselves in the best light.

I was thinking about this skill while grading exams yesterday. One student had starred one of the questions and written next to it "not a good question." 

Two points here: 

(1) the question was a scenario that I had brought up in class, asked the students what they would do, and then explained in detail what the legal issues were.  I then mentioned that the scenario would make a great test question.

(2) I am grading the student's exam.  I have power over her grade.  Why would she want to irritate the grader?

It seems to me that impression management is a skill we need to teach our students in order to help them be successful in their careers...

Comments

[KC]

If you are (or use) a grader that changes grades due to "irritation" from negative feedback about a question, someone's ethics are lacking. Graders should grade answers and leave it at that. Teachers should be willing to learn, though, from whatever feedback a student dares to send.

[Delaney Kirk]

Thanks for coming by to comment (and for listing my blog on your site). The question itself was a true/false question (which the student ended up getting incorrect). I would have been ok with her writing out any assumptions she was making and saying that that was why she marked it true. However, her only comment was that it was a bad question as in poorly designed (BTW, I've been putting together exams for over 25 years). It's a matter of impression management, a skill some students seem to be lacking and which will serve them well in their careers. Thanks for caring.

[md]

I think KC's point is valid, but off the mark. Of course it's unethical for an instructor to grade based on personal feelings or other forms of subjectivity. That doesn't change the fact that it's poor judgment on the part of the student to challenge the instructor in a flippant and unprofessional manner. The student may be able to count on the professionalism of Dr. Kirk, but unfortunately that is most certainly not always the case elsewhere!

In an ideal world we could behave in all sorts of nonsense without provoking an undesired response. The real world, however, doesn't quite work that way. We may have a "right" to behave in certain ways but that doesn't mean it's reasonable or sensible to do so!

As Dr. Kirk indicated, impression management is an important skill to development, and reminding us that our students need help in this area is the main point here. As an educator and author she has already achieved a successful career, her behavior isn't the concern! Given her success I hope her students are more inclined to listen to her insights than to seek peripheral justifications for dismissing her advice.

[Dr. Delaney Kirk]

Thanks for commenting. Yes, my point is that our students need help in impression management. Her boss is more likely just to fire her than to ignore or try to improve her inappropriate behavior.
BTW, you may already know this but my Ph.D. is from UNT (1988) and my son-in-law now teaches there in the history department. Small world.