Date of Graduation

1990

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

This investigation examined a model of Burgoon's Violation of Expectancy theory (Burgoon, 1978; Burgoon & Hale, 1987) as applied to the instructional context. Students' perceptions of teacher nonverbal immediacy were used in conjunction with the Expectancy Violation Model to predict amount of student learning. At the beginning of a term, students were asked to complete questionnaires assessing the expected level of nonverbal immediacy for one of their instructors. One week later, and at midterm, students were asked to complete questionnaires assessing the level of nonverbal immediacy evidenced by their instructors and the students' perceptions of the amount of learning that had occurred to that point. Violation of student expectations were examined by comparing students' perceived level of teacher nonverbal immediacy with students' expectations of teacher nonverbal immediacy. The violations of expectations score was combined with students' perceptions of immediacy and used as a predictor in assessing affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning. Results indicted that the degree of violation of immediacy expectations is, in part, positively related to student learning outcomes in a linear manner. This study found that students do have prior expectations of teacher behavior and do take note when these expectations are violated. It was also found that the combination of the degree of violations of nonverbal immediacy expectancies and nonverbal immediacy significantly predicted affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning. The combination of the degree of violations of nonverbal immediacy expectancies and nonverbal immediacy did not significantly predict, to a greater degree than immediacy alone, the learning variables examined. Implications for instructors and possible avenues for future research are discussed.

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