What [were] students responding to when they participated in classroom interactions [?] There was very little student-to-student
interaction. Ten percent of the total number of classroom interactions involved cases in which students responded to the question or comments of other students,… [so] that the actions of the teacher are indeed most crucial in promoting classroom interaction. Questions posed by teacher and teacher comments accounted for 88 percent of the classroom interactions. Especially significant is the fact that very few cases occur in which the teacher directly calls on a particular student to answer a question … Indeed, it might be argued that the current norm in college classroom is for bath students and teachers to avoid any type of direct personal confrontation with one other. It might be that “amicability” in the classroom is part of the larger process, described by Riesman (1950) in The Lonely Crowd, in which the desire to “get ahead” is subordinated to the desire to “get along” In the college classroom “getting along” means students and teachers avoiding any situation might be potentially embarrassing to one or the other.