Teacher immediacy and student learning: An examination of lecture/laboratory and self-contained course sections

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Luke LeFebvre
Mike Allen

Abstract

This study examined teaching assistant’s immediacy in lecture/laboratory and self-contained classes.  Two hundred fifty-six students responded to instruments measuring teachers’ immediacy behavior frequency, perceptions of instruction quality, and cognitive learning.  No significant difference was identified when comparing lecture/laboratory and self-contained teaching assistants’ immediacy behaviors.  But all students who observed frequent immediate behaviors demonstrated higher affective and cognitive learning.  Teaching assistants’ ratings had significantly higher levels of faculty-student interaction for self-contained sections but lecture/laboratory sections were significantly higher for student effort/involvement. 

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LeFebvre, L., & Allen, M. (2014). Teacher immediacy and student learning: An examination of lecture/laboratory and self-contained course sections. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 14(2), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v14i2.4002
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