Personal not private

An investigation on setting personal boundaries with students

Abstract

What are the boundaries in terms of openness when it comes to teaching higher education students? This question is relevant for all teachers, regardless of where they are in their teaching careers, yet it is not a simple question to answer. The goal of this study was to provide grounds for teachers to make a pondered decision regarding how open they want to be when engaging in personal -professional relationships with students. A mixed methodology was adopted and included a literature review complimented by a survey. Ten teachers from Lund University’s engineering faculty (LTH) were interviewed, and the survey responses correlated well with the literature findings. From the literature, two general rules were identified that teachers are recommended to follow: 1) to share information that is personal but not private (Elmgren & Henriksson, 2015) and 2) to be “friendly but not a friend” (Hosek & Thompson, 2009). The responses from interviewees agreed with these rules, but it was apparent that the definitions of “personal” versus “private” and “friendly” versus “friend” are not always clear. It was found that establishing a distinct set of criteria for establishing boundaries is quite difficult as it can involve many aspects such as personality, culture, faculty/department role, previous teaching experience and/or the nature of the course. The one thing that is clear is that each teaching situation is unique and that cultural aspects should always be considered to reduce the risk of misunderstandings. Recommendations for future work within the Swedish Higher Education system include investigating whether the students themselves are comfortable with the level of openness of their teachers, how level of openness varies among different Swedish institutes, and if the sharing of personal information has a positive or negative effect on student engagement and learning.