Student-Teacher Conflict Management

Although conflict resolution has long been an important focus of intercultural communication research, inadequate attention is given to conflict between college students and teachers. In response to the need, the present thesis attempts to examine how American and Chinese college students manage student-teacher conflict which stems from disagreement on such issues as classroom teaching style and teaching contents.Based on the quantitative analysis of the questionnaires filled out by 90 Chinese and 42 American college students, this thesis attempts to identify and compare the students'conflict management style preferences in the two cultural groups evaluating three affecting factors: face concern, conflict resolution goal, and trust for teachers.In the literature review and methodology sections, this thesis traces different approaches to conflict resolution studies and introduces the six research questions and two hypotheses. Based on a comprehensive study, the thesis first defines conflict and its management style. Despite relatively small differences, data from self-report questionnaires reveal that similarities exist between Chinese and American college students'conflict management style preferences (i.e., the integrating style is the most preferred one and the neglect is the least). The research then reveals three main factors that affect student's conflict management styles: face concern, conflict resolution goal, and trust for teachers. Data reveals that a) students in both cultures place greater emphasis on the self-face concern than on the other-face concern, and both face concern variables are good predictors of students'conflict management styles; b) compared with the content goal, students in both cultures pay much attention to the relational goal, however, both conflict resolution goals are found to have very weak power in predicting students'conflict management styles; and c) the trust for teachers is found to be a much better predicator within Chinese college students than it is within US college students.The research reveals that more similarities exist between the two cultural groups than dissimilarities. However, in light of the uninvestigated different cultural meanings and motivations behind the conflict management styles adopted in the two cultural contexts, more research, especially of a qualitative nature, are needed to make further explanations.