Teacher immediacy for affective learning in divergent college classes

This study examines immediacy salience and teacher nonverbal immediacy as potential indicators of student affective learning across different types of course content. Divergent courses were defined on a continuum ranging from P to T‐Type. P‐Type courses focus primarily on people‐oriented content, while T‐Type classes include content which is product or task‐oriented. Two research questions were addressed which were based on the logic that there is little reason to expect that teacher behaviors that are judged effective in one type of course content will be so in a very different type of course. Tests of the research questions in both P and T‐Type classes included multiple regression, commonality, and canonical correlation analyses. Results indicated that the actual magnitude of the impact of teacher immediacy on student affective learning and students’ perceptions of the importance of immediacy for instruction are a function of the type of course content taught. The findings are discussed in terms of affective learning and the relative importance of particular teacher communication behaviors for instruction in P and T‐Type classes.

Key concepts:

• Immediacy
• immediacy‐salience
• affective‐learning
• nonverbal‐immediacy
• teacher‐immediacy
• canonical‐correlation
• multiple‐regression
• course‐content
• communication education
• education
• teaching
• teachers
• learning