Teacher Immediacy Behaviors and Students’ Public Speaking Anxiety: More and Less Helpful than Anticipated

Authors

Beau Foutz, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community CollegeFollow
Michelle ViolantiFollow
Stephanie Kelly, North Carolina A&T State UniversityFollow
Suzanne Marie PrentissFollow

Section Name

Research Articles

Abstract

Public speaking anxiety inhibits students in the basic course classroom, whether face-to-face, hybrid or online, and beyond. Equipping instructors with the tools necessary to empower students to manage that anxiety and excel in their basic communication course is a goal of scholars and practitioners. In this study, the researchers examine applying and testing a math anxiety model (i.e., Kelly at al., 2015) to the challenge of public speaking anxiety. We expanded the original model by examining instructor verbal immediate behaviors alongside their nonverbal immediate behaviors. We also tested the Instructional Beliefs Model (IBM; Weber et al., 2011), which indicates that student beliefs (i.e., perceived immediacy mediates the relationship between student characteristics (i.e., intrinsic motivation) and instructor behaviors (i.e., verbal and nonverbal immediate behaviors) and the instructional outcome (i.e., public speaking anxiety) The data best fit the adapted math anxiety model; however, the influences were extremely low. This calls into question whether instructor immediate behaviors and student public speaking anxiety have been examined together many times before, but never published due to statistically insignificant results or low effect sizes.

Recommended Citation

Foutz, Beau; Violanti, Michelle; Kelly, Stephanie; and Prentiss, Suzanne Marie (2021) "Teacher Immediacy Behaviors and Students’ Public Speaking Anxiety: More and Less Helpful than Anticipated," Basic Communication Course Annual: Vol. 33, Article 13.
Available at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/bcca/vol33/iss1/13