Fair and Square? An Examination of Classroom Justice and Relational Teaching Messages

Students and instructors acknowledge the importance of the instructor-student relationship in the classroom. Despite the importance of the instructor-student interpersonal relationship, there can also be unexpected or undesirable outcomes associated with relational teaching. Using the theoretical framework of leader-member exchange, we explored relational teaching messages to understand how they may relate positively or negatively to student perceptions of classroom justice. Participants (N = 124) completed measures about relational communication strategies (i.e., rapport, confirmation, and affinity-seeking) and classroom justice (i.e., procedural, interactional, and distributive). Results indicate the enjoyable interaction dimension of rapport positively predicted perceptions of all three types of justice. The response to questions dimension of confirmation positively predicted perceptions of procedural and interactional justice.