Instructional Feedback III: How Do Instructor Facework Tactics and Immediacy Cues Interact to Predict Student Perceptions of Being Mentored?

Abstract

Mentoring is a trusting, developmental supervisory relationship whose success largely depends on participants' interpersonal abilities. Feedback interventions with mentees commonly present interactional challenges to maintaining that relationship, yet are integral to any teaching–learning context. In this study we examined whether and how two key, trainable teacher communication abilities—face-threat mitigation (FTM) and nonverbal immediacy—predicted students' perceptions of being mentored by a teacher. Levels of actual FTM tactics and teacher nonverbal immediacy (TNI) cues were manipulated in a feedback intervention situation on video and analyzed across a 2 × 2 design. Factorial MANCOVA analysis of perceived mentoring detected significant multivariate main effects for FTM tactics and for TNI cues, no significant two-way interaction effect between those two interpersonal variables, and differences in how TNI and FTM each contributed to predicting mentoring's four measured dimensions. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed in light of facework, approach–avoidance, feedback intervention, and leader–member exchange theories.