Roles of Professors in the Light of Goffman's Footing Theory

Abstract: In any classroom context, different factors affect on the learners’ achievement of knowledge from which the most crucial one is the role of teacher. According to Goffman’s Footing theory, the speaker’s role is categorized in three types of animator, author, and principal. The problem is that what kind of teacher’s role students prefer for their teacher to be more motivated. And another important issue is the effect of students’ gender on their selection. Also, this research wants to investigate if students of different majors have the same or different views toward their own and their ideal professors. In this study, 57 Iranian BA students of English (30 male & 27 female) and 57 Iranian BA students of Literature (30 male & 27 female) are asked to fill metaphor checklist to represent their teacher’s role in learning context. Consequently, statistical results of Chi-Square indicated that the English students prefer teachers who have principal role in English learning context. But Literature students prefer author role for their professors.