The Development and Testing of the Instructional Beliefs Model

Abstract

This article presents the Instructional Beliefs Model which forwards that teacher behaviors, student characteristics, and course-specific structural issues combine to influence students' instructional beliefs. Through these instructional beliefs, the first-order variables influence student learning outcomes. Three studies were conducted to investigate the validity of this model and to test this model against other dominant instructional communication models (specifically, the Affective Learning Model, the Motivation Model, and the Immediacy Model). Results from these studies provide support for the Instructional Beliefs Model as a theoretical framework for future research.

Keywords:

• Instructional Theory
• Motivation
• Instruction
• Learning
• Immediacy

Notes

1. Mottet, Frymier, and Beebe (2006) provide an extended explanation of all three theories.

2. When running the path analyses for the IBM in all three data sets, the modification indices failed to indicate that the addition of any paths not already specified in the model would improve model fit.

3. As a post hoc analysis an additional analysis was computed using self-efficacy as an additional first order variable. These results indicated that the data failed to provide this model with a good fit (NFI =.90, IFI=.87, CFI=.88, RMSEA=.12). While we believe that this is an interesting comparison we did not include in the manuscript because there was no real theoretical rationale for this model.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Keith Weber

Keith Weber (Ed.D., West Virginia University, 1998) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University

Matthew M. Martin

Matthew M. Martin (Ph.D., Kent State University, 1992) is Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University

Scott A. Myers

Scott A. Myers (Ph.D., Kent State University, 1995) is Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University