Instructor Misbehaviors and Math Anxiety

• In Event: Top Papers in Instructional Communication Division

Abstract

Instructor misbehaviors (i.e., antagonism, lectures, articulation) have been identified as instructor behaviors that negatively impact students’ success in the classroom. Math anxiety has also been identified as a barrier to students’ success in quantitative reasoning classes. The present study postulates that instructor misbehaviors are actually non-immediate behaviors, which is a set of instructional behaviors that increase the amount of psychological distance (i.e., perceived immediacy) that student perceive that they have with their instructor. As such, this paper predicted that instructor misbehaviors decrease students’ perceived immediacy, thereby increasing students’ math anxiety. A mediated model was supported by the data.

Authors

• Stephanie Kelly, North Carolina A&T State U

• Alfredo Romero, North Carolina A&T State U

• Jennifer A Morrow, U of Tennessee

• Zachary Denton, North Carolina A&T State U

• Johnny Ducking, North Carolina A&T State U