TEACHER DISCLOSURE: DEVELOPING PRIVACY RULES, MANAGING BOUNDARIES AND BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

The roles and responsibilities of middle school teachers are never ending. From instructing students on state-mandated curriculum to the enrichment of character and inquiry, teachers make daily decisions about how and what to disclose to their students. The current study reexamines Hosek and Thompson’s (2009) study on how teachers develop privacy rules and coordinate boundaries using Petronio’s Communication Privacy Management as the theoretical framework. Studying middle school teachers, in lieu of college instructors, allows for a better understanding of how privacy rules and boundaries are constructed and used within the middle school. This provides a better understanding of the important factors that influence teachers’ communicative decision making within the classroom.