Positioning of Mature Students Based on Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Behaviors

The purpose of this present study is to analyze how mature students position themselves and traditional students at a vocational college based on their verbal and non-verbal communication behaviors. Four mature students whose average age was 35 in 2019 participated in this study from March 2018 to January 2019. For the study, year-long participant observation and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in order to collect data for the analysis. This current study analyzes the data under the framework of Positioning Theory (Davies and Harré 1990, 1999), focusing on mature students’ positioning based on their verbal and non-verbal communication behaviors. The findings demonstrated that the mature students who reflexively position themselves as active learners in class in their non-verbal communication behaviors reflexively position themselves as quiet participants in their verbal behaviors. These demonstrate mature students’ eagerness not to inform their reflexive positioning of themselves as active learners to their younger peers. These also show mature students’ struggle over their position as students in the classroom. These findings suggest that the need for instructors and schools to better understand mature students and treat them equally as traditional students to allow them to better position themselves and consider themselves as those who are equal to other traditional students.