0

Sometimes I encounter in online or in-person Chinese classes, students who comment on their teachers appearance. Typically it's a female teacher, and the student will say something like 她很美丽 or 她很漂亮 (both meaning "she's beautiful"). In a recent Reddit post, a student described their teacher as

她很美，也不老。
She's beautiful, and not old.

If I were the teacher, I would feel very uncomfortable getting such comments. My mind would be filled with questions: Are they flirting with me? What other professional boundaries are they going to ignore? Am I going to get in trouble for this? Am I inadvertently sending signals that my appearance is somehow on-topic? Should I somehow dress or behave differently? I spent years training to be a teacher, why is how I look relevant? I'd want this moment to end as soon as possible.

So...

Question: Is there research into language teachers getting comments from students on their appearance?

In particular I'm wondering if there's research such as a survey of how teachers feel about such comments, why students make such comments, and how commonly such comments are actually made.

I couldn't imagine a student calling, say, their chemistry teacher "beautiful and not old" and thinking that's normal behavior. I'm guessing these comments occur more frequently in language learning partly because the students only know a handful of adjectives, and didn't think to say "...is a good teacher" or "...is very helpful".

Rebecca J. Stones
  • 2,450
  • 1
  • 12
  • 26
  • 1
    As the teacher, it's your prerogative to give cultural advice. If I were the teacher, and if I found that it'd be culturally inappropriate to describe a teacher as 'beautiful', then I would just say that in the lesson, and then suggest an appropriate alternative (e.g. 'in so-so-and-so country, we don't normally say that our teacher is beautiful, instead we would say ...'). No, they are not saying that to flirt with you. – Brandin Nov 07 '23 at 07:11
  • This is not a language learning issue. – Lambie Nov 11 '23 at 19:43
  • 1
    I feel it is specific to language learning, because (unlike other subjects) students learn words like "beautiful" in a new language, then describe their teacher using those words. Students may also not be aware of the nuances of using newly learned words, and different cultural sensitivities, so don't understand the taboos involved. It seems part of being an L2 teacher is learning how to gracefully and professionally deal with such comments, perhaps in front of a whole class. – Rebecca J. Stones Nov 11 '23 at 21:30
  • There is no difference between language teachers getting comments from students on their appearance and any other type of teacher getting comments about that. What kids do online is a different story. – Lambie Nov 27 '23 at 15:36

1 Answers1

-1

A quick and ad hoc search on Google scholar finds for example:

  • Marija Bartulović, Barbara Kušević & Ana Širanović (2012) He, she, it: gender bias in teacher–student interaction at university, Intercultural Education, 23:2, 147-159, DOI: 10.1080/14675986.2012.686237
  • Lloyd Carson (2001) Gender relations in higher education: exploring lecturers’ perceptions of student evaluations of teaching, Research Papers in Education, 16:4, 337-358, DOI: 10.1080/02671520152731990
  • Gustavo González-Calvo, Valeria Varea & Lucio Martínez-Álvarez (2019) Health and body tensions and expectations for pre-service physical education teachers in Spain, Sport, Education and Society, 24:2, 158-167, DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2017.1331426

None of these are about language teaching in particular, and neither about sexist remarks, so a more comprehensive search is like to lead to better results. I used keywords such as "teacher" "body pressure".

I recommend either reading this and seeing what kind of related literature they refer to, and then seeing who cites them by using for example Semantic scholar or Google scholar. You might find a relevant article that way, or at least find new keywords you can search for to get closer to what you want.

This is unfortunately not my research field, so I do not know the particular terms that would be productive.

Tommi
  • 3,492
  • 1
  • 11
  • 37