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Comm 156I Qualitative Communication Inquiry
Final Narrative Project (v2)
Name(s): Mike Gonzalez, Makenna Haramia, Ben Yoell
Title
Small Talk Between Students and Professors
Introduction
It was the morning before class. The irksome buzz of the alarm clock did not go off and
class began at nine o’clock in the morning. Due to waking up only several minutes before class
had begun, a huge rush of anxiety overwhelmed; missing this class was not a personal choice.
Pressed for time, there was not a moment to eat breakfast. After rushing to class, steamed,
glistening with sweat, the clock had just struck nine. The classroom door then opened up; a
buttery aroma filled the air. There in the front of the class, was a table covered with round,
spongy, glazed and powdered donuts. While walking towards the table, picking up two soft
delectable donuts, the professor smiled and greeted in a joyful tone, “So how about that Raider
coach getting fired?” Chatting several minutes with the professor before the actual political
science lesson had begun, talking about the excitement and thrill of how the coach was now gone
and how the Raiders were then going to do throughout the season, the professor then stated, “I
figured all of you football fans would enjoy the news, so I bought you these donuts to celebrate!”
Whilst enthused making it to class on time, able to discuss the common favored morning topic of
football, able to eat the sweet mouthwatering donuts for breakfast, this class thus ranked itself to
a much more enjoyable class to attend.

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Based off this scenario, the research topic we decided to study was, how enabling small-
talk communication between professors and students affects student’s participation and
motivation towards the class. Essentially, we all took interest in this topic idea because, we
eventually wanted to see if this observation of small- talk, will benefit the students’ satisfaction
in the classroom. Thus our research question to this topic was, “What is the relationship between
student/teacher small talk and overall satisfaction with a particular class?” The final answer to
this research question is important because, if our hypothesis proves true then we would have
collected hard beneficial evidence that encourages teachers to use small talk communication
within their classrooms, and to encourage students to interact with their professors.
Literature Review
Cranton (2006) and Docan-Morgan (2011) essentially focused on and elaborated the
transformation of relationships as seen amongst students and their teachers. Cranton for example,
observes the transformation of learning seen in students, by establishing meaningful, genuine
relationships amongst students and teachers within the classroom, whilst Docan- Morgan
investigates college teachers’ experiences of relational turning points with their students as well
as, how these turning point events may affect teaching outcomes. Moreover, teachers who were
able to identify a relational turning point event with a student essentially learned about their
understandings of authentic teaching. These two studies discussed the student’s comfortability
with their professors as well as the teacher‘s perception of their students and how well their
interpersonal relationships were established. Moreover, these studies further went into depth as
to how students engaged in a serious dialogue with their authority figures he or she knows, likes
and trusts, and how easy it is for them to accept that authority figure’s information. In respect,

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focusing on the teacher’s point of view, as in who reported intimation and realization of student
potential or success turning point events, indicated an increase in liking for students, teacher
student interpersonal relationships, teacher self-efficacy, teacher motivation, and teacher job
satisfaction. Transformative learning is stimulated by any event or experience that calls into
question our habitual expectations about ourselves and the world around us, in the context of the
classroom, it likely depends on the nature of dialogue and relationships between teacher and
student and among students.
Mottet (2014) and Patterson (2009) have studies closely related to each other. Each takes
a different angle on participation and small talk. Mottets’ dealt with verbal and non-verbal
responses given by students to teachers. The main goal of the study was to find which type of
responses (verbal or non-verbal) would be more effective on establishing a relationship between
student and teacher. The study found that students who liked their teacher would be more willing
to comply and put up less resistance to their teachers when in the classroom. At the end of the
study researchers concluded that both non-verbal and verbal responses have an impact on
establishing a relationship but non verbal’s had more of an impact overall. In comparison
Patterson deals with a student who would have a difficult time staying seated during the duration
of the class. Unlike Mottet, Patterson used small talk directly as a tool to solve a behavioral
problem with the student, where Mottet was observing for behaviors of students engaging in
verbal and non-verbal participation behaviors. There are many potential solutions to this problem
but the teacher used small talk as a tool to get the student to stay focused. The small talk used
varied from simply greeting him when he arrived, sending words of encouragement, and even
person specific expectations that would give him something to focus on that was unique to him.
The course of action that was taken was unique in Patterson’s research by implementing small

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talk directly as a communication tool to aid a behavioral situation. Both studies provide us with
useful insights and research on small talk. Participation was highlighted in Mottet more so then
we got more of the direct use of small talk to encourage a student completely. Both allow us to
see that small talk has an impact on participation, whether it be students reacting to their teacher
or the teacher using small talk to help control her student.
For a classroom setting to be a comfortable environment where students feel free to
interact, teachers have to find the best way of engaging the students. Muller’s (2014) goal was to
find significance in different interactive classroom communication practices. The different
perspective they viewed from include structure of classroom, scholarship advocating rationales,
and investigating classroom practices that relate to this classroom interactive practice. Different
trends related to comfort were found as the researcher began to label traditional teacher talk and
nontraditional teacher talk. In the end, there was a high significance with the concept of
interaction being somewhat related to what the instructor uses for engagement. Nunn’s (1996) is
a far larger emphasis on teacher’s techniques to encourage verbal communication. In order to
create a large sample population, Nunn decided to vary the classroom sizes and subjects, which
allowed for a diverse and larger sample size to collect more credible data. He then applied
techniques such as calling the students by name, repeating multiple classroom concepts, and
giving students praise for showing progress. A positive correlation came about in the studies
final results between both student participation and professors using certain teaching techniques
to increase participation among students. Both of these studies mentioned that teachers notice
particular trends that lead to students not wanting to participate. These studies allowed for
teachers to experiment with different techniques and find significance in the way the students
reacted from these particular techniques. There were multiple cases in these studies where more

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than one technique seemed to work. The idea is a teacher can change up their approach with
different techniques that work for students so that they do not get used to one form of
engagement.
Method
For this research topic, we designed our research off of three methods: observation,
interviews and focus groups. The first method we used was observation. One of the locations that
we had observed on the San Jose State Campus, was in Hugh Gillis Hall, room 225. In order to
collect the most valuable data possible, we had to pilot our interviews, focus groups, and
observations. Nunn (1996) suggested that this was extremely important in that patterns of
participation will begin to occur. This ended making a lot of sense when we piloted because we
had to make adjustments quick before we began our actual observations. During the observation
process, we decided that it was more beneficial to sit in the back of the classroom. By sitting in
the back of the classroom, this allowed us to view the entire scope of everyone in the class. Since
room 225 is a fairly small classroom, it was unnecessary to section off our observations to just
one particular part of the class. Furthermore, in this class, we observed the entire room from left
to right as we preferably grabbed a seat in the middle back. As the professor taught her lesson,
we kept separate journals from our class notes in order to observe students in an organized
manner. We also kept a watchful eye on the clock, to record the exact times of small talk. In this
class, there were a handful of students who participated frequently in small talk. These students
went by the code-names of “K-Hawk,” “A’s Fan,” “Oldie but Goodie,” “Shorty,” “Morgan,” and
“Kobe.” We observed this class twice a week for four weeks totaling to eight observation
sessions. Observations were made on a participatory basis when participants exhibited the

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various types of small talk. The class ran for an hour and fifteen minutes with observations
running the entire class period while lecture was occurring.
The second class we observed was Anthropology 160 in Clark Hall room 310. There was
a back row against the wall right as you entered the class room with six rows of desk
perpendicular to the back row running the length of the classroom with the projector screen and
professor up front. We would observe when small talk was occurring and noted for their
interactions with the professors. There were four students in this class who stood out when it
came to interacting and creating small talk with the professor. “Laptop Guy,” “Red Converse,”
“Curly Hair Girl,” and “Beanie Guy,” engaged in small talk with the professor at a higher
frequency than the rest of the students in the class. We observed the class twice a week for four
weeks totaling to eight observation sessions. Observations were made on a participatory basis
when participants exhibited the various types of small talk. The class ran for an hour and fifteen
minutes with observations running the entire class period while lecture was occurring.
The third class we observed was POLS 120 in Dudley Moorhead 226A. This particular
class was split into two halves so small talk took place approximately twice every lesson. We
noticed early in our piloting that there was a common theme of people who both participated in
the small talk before class and also in class lecture as well. Given that this was a political science
course where lots of emotions involved in opinionated discussions, we saw how these different
categories of small talk affected the students during the lecture. In the observation coding, the
combination of students having negative and positive effects will be more apparent due to how
even the data came out in this classroom setting. Observations for this class happened twice a
week for four weeks creating a total of eight observation sessions. Observations were made on a

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participatory basis when participants exhibited the various types of small talk. Each observation
session lasted an hour and fifteen minutes; essentially during the entire time period of the class.
For the second method, our group performed a series of interviews with SJSU students.
We based our rationale for participants based off of age, year of graduation, major, and
availability. For the interview method, we had contacted our participants a week in advance to
schedule a face-to-face meeting with them. Before each interview, we had our participants agree
to and sign a consent form which allowed permission for us to use their invoice as data. We
ended up conducting fourteen interviews total and were able to allocate some very beneficial
information. An example of a question that was asked was “How does small talk with your
professors affect the way you engage with your class?” followed up by the probe “Why do you
believe that is?” The interviews gave us some very specific examples where we were able to let
one individual, tell their story. The interview participants included male and female participants
ranging from 20 to 23 years of age who include: Kyle, Valarie, Ronnie, Drew, Nikolus, Deion,
Adil, Alyssa, Stephanie, Lauren, Thomas, Derek, Darryn, Jose, and Christian.
For our third and final method, we used focus groups. By conducting focus groups, the
task was a little bit more difficult. This essentially was because we needed to get a large number
of students to meet all at the same time. We still took the same approach; we reached out to
SJSU students and made our selection based off of age, year of graduation, major, and
availability and constantly kept contact with them, reminding them to participate. We reached
out to various resources of people such as friends, co-workers, and club members. Providing
incentive was a beneficial way of being able to get these resources to come to our focus groups
and help us collect data. We were able to persuade or participants with free food. We then

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conducted our focus groups in rooms that were available in the library as well as used our houses
at predetermined times. Before each focus group, we had our participants agree to and sign a
consent form which allowed permission for us to use their invoice as data. We ended up
conducting six focus groups total, ranging from five to ten people. An example of a question we
asked the focus group was “Do your professors do an ice breaker or create casual conversation
before class?” This allowed for the group of students to provide us with valuable information
through storytelling. The whole group felt comfortable to share since they were able to relate so
easily. Our focus group consisted of male and female participants ranging from 20 to 23 years of
age. Focus Group Participants included: Lance, Scotty, Sedrick, Lauren, Christian, Stephanie,
Alyssa, Deion, Gavin, Drew, Kyle, Christina, Ricky, Eliana, Matt, Kile, John, Justin, Anisa,
Francisco, Daniel, Valarie, Osi, Caitlyn, Omar, Alec, Joshua, Mitchell, Nick, Elliot, Wyatt,
David, Nick, Dom, and Zak.
Our coding scheme was based off of the different types of small talk we had observed
and the results of the small talk scenarios. We broke down the categories of our data into four
major categories. First is Topical Small Talk which has sub categories of relation to class and
class specific topics. Second, Tangential Small Talk, which related to SJSU and general student
processes and has a sub categories of student processes and school wide topics. Our third
category, non- topical small talk, deals with cultural and worldly topics such as news, sports,
gossip, anything outside of class that did not fall into our other categories and has a sub category
of unrelated to school. Our last category was relational small talk, which deals with emotional
support and relating to the students on a social level and has a sub categories of emotional and
relational social support. The codes were results of the small talk and the type of effect it had on

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the student based off of what happened in the course of the small talk and how it ended. We
coded for “helping the student” if the small talk with the professor benefitted the student directly.
Our second code “hindering the student” was if the small talk left the student still unanswered or
uncomfortable. The final code was “creating comfort” and it accounted for the result of the small
talk that would allow for a more comfortable setting in the classroom or interactions between the
professor and students.
Findings and Discussion
We set out to answer the question, “What is the relationship between student/teacher
small talk and overall satisfaction with a particular class?” From all of our data collected we see
a positive relationship between the nature and frequency of student/teacher small talk in relation
to how much these interactions improved the student’s satisfaction in class. According to Muller
(2014), he tried to define a structure that would help identify the different aspects of the
classroom. Our concept is very similar only there is a bigger emphasis on the students
themselves. Docan-Morgan (2011) found that students have a turning point in their relationship
with their teachers often after there was a discussion related to the nature of course material. We
see the same patterns in our data, from across all our methods of data collection that there is a
high number of students who felt they had been helped and became more comfortable with their
professor after discussing the details of an assignment or asking for clarification of a particular
assignment.
Our research participants showed a general approval that non topical small talk was a
great way to feel more comfortable in the classroom; thus they would feel more satisfied with the
class and more comfortable when interacting with the professor. In one of our interviews, an
interviewee stated, “I love sports so when I hear my professors talk about sports I always feel

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like I have something to contribute directly to the professor." It was apparent throughout our data
that topics of non-topical small talk made the students feel more comfortable than any other type
of student/teacher small talk. The focus groups produced the same result when looking at non
topical small talk. A majority of the participants agreed that non topical small talk leads to more
comfortability between students/professors. Students felt that these topics helped take down the
barrier between being intimidated by their professor, and seeing them as a regular person who is
relatable and easy to talk to. Cranton (2006) believed that establishing a relationship between
professors and students in the classroom created a healthy environment for student development.
In one of the focus groups, we saw Professors use non-topical small talk in the form of
icebreakers, particularly in classrooms that required more student participation. The observations
provided a similar pattern.
Tangential small talk had a majority of a positive result when it came to creating
comfortability between professors and students. What was interesting was the focus groups
resulted in the only instances of students feeling hindered by their professors using tangential
small talk in class. Caitlin during the focus group said that she did not come to SJSU to hear her
professors waste class time to discuss outside of class events, she said she paid to learn about the
class material not to hear about San Jose State's’ constant problems. This was not a pattern that
was observed in the observations and interviews. We saw a positive relationship between
tangential small talk and class satisfaction during our observations and interviews, during Kyles
interview he stated “In hospitality everyone talks who is doing what event, my professor
suggested the Pebble Beach event, she gave us her personal experience about the event and it
gave me a better idea of what I was getting myself into." Experiences like these occurred at a

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much higher rate than those who experienced tangential small talk as a hinder to their
satisfaction.
Mottet (2014) stated that student’s verbal responses did not have a significant effect on
teachers’ willingness to fulfill student requests. From our observations and interviews we noted
students who communicated verbally with their professors via small talk had their in class issue
resolved, only because they communicated with their professor the professor was willing to help
fulfill their request, for example in our observations Morgan did not realize that she had to turn
in a handwritten copy of an assignment as she misread the syllabus thinking it was a typed copy,
after talking with her professor she was able to end up emailing the assignment in place of the
handwritten copy. This request would not have been accessible without the verbal interaction
between the student and the professor.
Relational small talk had an interesting pattern within our data. Just about a quarter of the
responses given to use from our observations, interviews, and focus groups gave us examples of
emotional small talk which was higher than we originally anticipated. Within the results of the
focus groups and interviews we see that some students did not appreciate their professors
attempting to engage in relational small talk with them. In one of our focus groups Christina
stated she did not like it when professors tried to find out what is wrong when she is working
with her groups, “ I really don't like when professors ask me what’s wrong or try to talk to me
when I am doing group work. I‘m a really social person I just honestly do not like talking to my
professors.” Patterson (2009) tried to break the barrier of a student’s normal behavior by use of
small talk to create a more active and comfortable classroom setting. In rare instances there are

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students who do want little to no relationship with the Professor and see small talk purely as a
take away from their learning.
In the end we were able to find out that our hypotheses of our research question was
correct from the data we collected. Students showed that small talk with their professor does
increase the level of satisfaction that the student has with that particular class. The level of
comfort between student and professor was established through various types of small talk as we
found in our data collection. This increase in comfortability between professors and students lead
to students being more satisfied with professors who used small talk within the classroom.
Limitations and Future Research
One of the limitations we had in the project came from a lack participants in two of the
focus groups conducted. Two of the focus groups only had 5 participants while the remainder of
the focus groups had 8 to 10 participants to collect data from. The lack of participants did not
affect the overall data as much as expected, the five participants that attended provided excellent
answers and were very interactive with each other and to the questions throughout the focus
group.
The other limitation we had was not getting the opportunity to perform enough
observations during the class lectures. We had a few incidents of there being tests and speeches
on the scheduled observation times. Since we did not have enough time to keep doing more
observations we were unable to get as much information from the observations as we would have
liked. Next time we would definitely try to start our piloting observations a little bit earlier and
have more time to plan out our schedule accordingly. We truly wish that the transition from

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piloting to our actual observations was a smoother transition. However, we collected enough data
to get some reassurance that we did a great job of organizing a foundation for our research. Even
though we ran into a few issues we were still able to collect some very valuable data from these
observations and did an excellent job of picking the right courses to observe.
The last issue we had was being able to interview the majority of students from the same
class. We knew this would be relatively difficult since we did not know too many people in our
courses to begin with. Time constraints also played a big factor in us taking the time to find the
perfect way to approach these students. Next time we would try to become more familiar with
the students so they are not as shocked when we try to get an interview out of them. Although
this would have been beneficial getting students from the exact setting, we were still able to get a
wide variety of SJSU students to interview with us and that gave us valuable data. Given a
second opportunity we know we could capitalize on the mistakes that were made.

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References
*Cranton, P. (2006). Fostering authentic relationships in the transformative classroom.
New Directions For Adult & Continuing Education, 2006(109), 5-13. doi:
10.1002/ace.203
*Docan-Morgan, T. (2011). 'Everything changed': Relational turning point events in college
teacher-student relationships from teachers' perspectives. Communication Education,
60(1), 20-50. doi:10.1080/03634523.2010.497223
*Mottet, P., Beebe, S.A., & Raffeld, P.C. (2014). The Effects of Student Verbal and Nonverbal
Responsiveness on Teachers’ Liking of Students and Willingness to Comply with
Student
Requests. Communication Quarterly, 52(1), 27-38.
*Muller, H. L. (2014). A grounded practical theory reconstruction of the communication practice
of instructor-facilitated collegiate classroom discussion. Journal of applied
communication research, 42(3). 325-342. doi:10.1080/00909882.2014.911941
*Nunn, C. E. (1996). Discussion in the college classroom: Triangulating observational and

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survey results. Journal Of Higher Education, 67. 243-266. Retrieved on September 1,
2014 from http://discover.sjlibrary.org:50080/ebsco-w-a/ehost/detail/detail?
*Patterson, S.T. (2009). The Effects of Teacher-Student Small Talk on Out-of-Seat Behavior.
Education & Treatment of Children, 32(1), 167-174.