Examining communication privacy management in the middle school classroom: perceived gains and consequences

Abstract

Background: From instructing students on curriculum content to helping their pupils to develop a wide range of skills, teachers in many educational settings make daily decisions about how and what to disclose to their students to build relationships and make connections with content. Purpose: The current study, applied to a North American middle school context, reveals what is known about teacher disclosure in higher education in terms of how teachers develop privacy rules and coordinate boundaries. Sample: Ten certified middle school teachers of 11-14-year-olds (i.e. six to eighth graders) from one school were invited to participate in individual semi-structured interviews. Network sampling of teachers was employed. Method: Interview data were transcribed and Petronio's communication privacy management (CPM) was used as the theoretical framework to guide the identification of themes. Findings: Analysis provided support for the original four criteria identified in CPM and revealed an additional criterion (i.e. 'identification rapport') for this specific group of middle school teachers. Teachers also reported the importance of understanding the potential positive and negative consequences associated with disclosing personal information to middle school students. Conclusions: This study suggests that CPM can be meaningfully extended to a specific middle school context. In addition, the emergence of 'identification rapport' as an additional criterion provides fresh insight into middle school teachers' communication privacy management.

Conceptualization and operationalization: utility of communication privacy management theory

“…Informational owners make choices about their access using "privacy rule criteria" to drive privacy rule choices [28,29,14]. Core privacy rule criteria are stable and predictable factors of privacy regulation across time, such as the influence of culture on privacy management decisions.…”

Boundaries as a coping strategy: emotional labour and relationship maintenance in distressing teacher education situations

“…Furthermore, boundaries have been viewed as a way to establish how much personal information to disclose in relationship maintenance with pupils. Student teachers reported a need to be aware of the negative and positive consequences that could come from disclosing personal information (Kaufmann and Lane 2014). Also, teachers report that they engage in a balancing act between caring and maintaining a level of control in the classroom when discussing boundaries (Aultman, Williams-Johnson, and Schutz 2009).…”

Opinions of the Class Teachers towards “Privacy” and its Violation

“…There are some events that happen in the school that only the school staff should know about; these constitute the private life of the school. Sharing confidential situations with others is a violation of the privacy of school life (Imber & Geel, 2010;Kauffman & Lane, 2014;Mawdsley, 2004). According to Imber & Geel (2010), problems with confidentiality at schools cause conflict between the administration of the school and teachers.…”

“…McLaughlin (1992) further determined that teachers who attach great importance to privacy in their personal lives are rule-makers and tend to view their work as being routine, highly bureaucratic, and unchangeable. In interviews with 10 branch teachers, Kauffman & Lane (2014) reported that teachers expressed that the development of standard rules and criterions for the storage of private information at schools, the establishment of a confidentiality culture, the mutual determination to not exceed confidentiality limits, and the placement of boundaries within relationships are key principles to protecting privacy. Little (1990) found in his study that interactions between teachers did not threaten the confidentiality of their private lives and professional solidarity.…”