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Abstract
There were two purposes of this study. First, this study sought to examine the extent to which students’ expressed academic performance concern to their instructors is associated with the students’ learning outcomes (i.e., affective learning, cognitive learning, and use of learning indicators) and to students’ motives (i.e., relational, functional, excuse-making, participatory, and sycophantic) for communicating with their instructors. Second, this study sought to determine if students’ expressed academic performance concern is a unique reason (i.e., motive) why students communicate with their instructors. Undergraduate students (N = 365) completed a series of self-report measures. The results of Pearson correlations indicated that students’ expressed academic performance concern is related positively to their learning outcomes and motives for communicating with their instructors. Furthermore, an exploratory factor analysis revealed that students’ expressed academic performance concern is a unique motive for why they communicate with their instructors. These findings coupled with a confirmatory factor analysis also establish concurrent, discriminant, and factorial validity of the newly developed Academic Concern Scale used in this study.
Notes
Note. F1 = participatory motive; F2 & F7 = excuse-making motive; F3 = relational motive; F4 = functional motive; F5 = sycophantic motive; F6 = expressed academic concern. Loadings below .30 are suppressed.
The three items used to assess students’ cognitive learning were: I have learned a great deal in this class; my knowledge on this class topic has increased since the beginning of class; I can see clear changes in my understanding of this topic.