Teacher Misbehaviors as Learning Demotivators in College Classrooms: A Cross-Cultural Investigation in China, Germany, Japan, and the United States

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate teacher misbehaviors as learning demotivators across four cultures: the U.S., China, Germany, and Japan. Three major findings were reported: (1) teachers across cultures all were perceived to misbehave infrequently, with only slight variations found across cultures; (2) teachers across cultures were perceived to engage in similar misbehavior tendencies. Overall, incompetence was the most common form of teacher misbehaviors, and some of the most frequently reported teacher misbehaviors were similar across cultures; and (3) teacher misbehaviors were associated with learning demotivators pan-culturally and within each culture, but they differed in the magnitude as predictors, explaining 8%–39% of the variance in student demotivation across cultures. Among the three dimensions of teacher misbehaviors, incompetence was the greatest source of demotivation within and across cultures.

Keywords:

• Teacher Misbehaviors
• Cross-Cultural
• Motivation
• Learning Demotivators

This paper was presented at the 2007 Eastern Communication Association annual meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

This paper was presented at the 2007 Eastern Communication Association annual meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

Acknowledgments

This study was partially funded by a faculty summer research stipend from Fairfield University. The author thanks Dr. John Oetzel for his assistance in data analyses and Drs. Xiaofang Gao, Richard Wilcox, and Jiro Takai for their assistance in data collection. The author also thanks Dr. Patricia Kearney and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on previous drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

This paper was presented at the 2007 Eastern Communication Association annual meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qin Zhang

Qin Zhang (Ph.D., University of New Mexico, 2005) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Fairfield University