PROXEMIC AND NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION IN CLASSROOM INTERACTION

ABSTRACT

This article reports a study carried out about teacher-student interaction in a public school in the early years, in the city of Santiago, Chile. The study performed a quantitative analysis of the frames of images captured by a mini camera mounted on eyeglasses of a group of 18 students. The selected frames were those that the teacher appears in the students’ visual field. The analysis was developed from the concept of proxemics and the results show that there are times when the classroom teacher interacts with students at a closer level and, in others, there is a greater distance. Furthermore, it was possible to identify differences between boys and girls regarding the proxemic patterns of visual involvement in the interaction. The results of this study indicate new directions for the analysis of teacher-student interaction, focusing on non-verbal aspects in the construction of teaching and learning relationships.

Keywords:
teacher student interaction; proxemics; nonverbal communication