- Title
- The influence of high power distance in student-teacher relationships and its effects on reading proficiency: a case study of Saudi students in EFL classrooms at Albaha University in Saudi Arabia
- Creator
- Alshahrani, Abdulaziz
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The key objective of this study was to examine the possible effects of power distance (PD) as a sociolinguistic factor on Saudi university students’ English reading proficiency. Most research on the role of PD in education has been done in low PD countries like the USA and Western Europe. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) where the current study was conducted is a fast developing Middle Eastern Islamic country of rich traditional and Islamic culture representing a high PD. In that regard its context provides a valuable opportunity to test various aspects of the theory of PD. In a high PD culture like KSA, in a classroom learning environment, the authority of the teacher is accepted and respected with high reverence. It is a teacher-centered culture which is generally devoid of independence and individualism in learning. Student-teacher relationships are highly formal, and classroom discourse is typically unidirectional from the teacher to the students. Prior to the study reported here there has been no research on how KSA’s high PD setting affects teacher-student relationships and to what extent high PD influences learning outcomes. This was the central issue examined in this work. Albaha University (in the city of Albaha, KSA) was chosen as the venue for this research. Albaha is a medium-sized provincial capital which is representative of mainstream Saudi social and cultural values. Using cluster random sampling, 100 university students and four teachers were recruited for the study. Data in relation to PD, the independent variable, were collected via a questionnaire and via classroom observations. The questionnaire included a section on participants’ demographic background. A dedicated language test was used to obtain data on the participants’ reading proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL), the dependent variable. The data were subjected to a range of descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. Two principal research questions were addressed: whether the PD variable can predict students’ EFL reading proficiency; and whether demographic variables can predict EFL reading proficiency. In relation to the former, the analyses revealed PD to be a statistically significant, albeit weak, predictor of participants’ EFL reading proficiency. Among the demographic variables, age and mother’s level of education were found to be significant, but also weak, predictors of students’ EFL reading proficiency. The regression models deployed for the purposes of the study established that PD and demographics can only account for a relatively small proportion of the variance in the reading proficiency scores, indicating (as expected) that L2 proficiency is sensitive to a broad range of different factors.
- Subject
- power distance; student-teacher relationship; SLA; sociolinguistics
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1317085
- Identifier
- uon:23328
- Rights
- Copyright 2016 Abdulaziz Alshahrani
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 5 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 247 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |