Teacher antagonism: reducing students’ sustained attention through decreased affect toward instructors and diminished motivation to learn

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to model how teacher misbehaviors associate with reductions in students’ sustained attention. Participants (N = 423 college students) responded to measures of their perceptions of teacher antagonism, affect for their instructor, intrinsic motivation to learn, and sustained attention throughout the semester. Results of a path analysis indicated that teacher antagonism did not impact students’ sustained attention directly or indirectly through their affect for the instructor or intrinsic motivation (individually, as simple indirect effects). Rather, results from a serial multiple mediator model demonstrated that the effect of teacher antagonism on students’ sustained attention occurred through a reduction in affect for their instructor and, in turn, a reduction in intrinsic motivation to learn. Results are discussed with regard to the potential impact on student learning and best practices in the classroom.

KEYWORDS:

• antagonism
• affect
• intrinsic motivation
• sustained attention
• serial mediation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Modeling teacher antagonism as a continuous variable (as was our original intention using the 5-point scale) would estimate each 1-unit change in misbehavior, yet we only had 27 students who scored above a 1.0 on the scale. We did not have an adequate sample size to consider 1-unit changes from 1.0 (rarely) to 2.0 (sometimes), and then 2.0 to 3.0 (often); and we had no data at 4.0 (very often) on the antagonism scale. To remedy this, we modeled teacher antagonism as a dichotomous variable (0 = no misbehavior reported with a scale composite score of 0; 1 = any score on the antagonism scale above 0 indicating some misbehavior). We used dummy coding so that our interpretation of the unstandardized beta (path a₁) was a 1-unit increase (0 to 1) interpreted as the mean difference between students who reported no misbehavior versus students who experienced at least some misbehavior. Dichotomizing a continuous variable is not ideal because it can create Type II error, but this decision can be defensible when a variable is highly non-normal (Streiner, 2002) as antagonism was in our sample (skewness = 3.526, kurtosis = 14.414). For full transparency, leaving antagonism as continuous (recognizing that 1-unit changes beyond 0–1 are based on very few participants, if any) yields practically the same serial indirect effect (−.106, [−.181, −.043]).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

San Bolkan

San Bolkan (Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin, 2007) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

Alan K. Goodboy

Alan K. Goodboy (Ph.D., West Virginia University, 2007) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.

Matt Shin

Matt Shin (M.A., California State University, Fullerton, 2020) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.

Rebekah M. Chiasson

Rebekah M. Chiasson (M.A., Northern Illinois University, 2021) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.