Instructional Feedback II: How Do Instructor Immediacy Cues and Facework Tactics Interact to Predict Student Motivation and Fairness Perceptions?

Abstract

During feedback interventions (FIs), instructors may feel torn between directing students’ learning or maintaining productive rapport with them. Existing research suggests how instructional communication can achieve both outcomes. This study examined how students’ motivation to learn and perceptions of fairness were enhanced or eroded via particular instructional behaviors. Actual face-threat mitigation (FTM) tactics and teacher nonverbal immediacy (TNI) cues were manipulated in differing combinations to manage an FI situation, with varying effects on the outcome variables. Multivariate analysis detected main effects and a significant interaction effect between FTM and TNI regarding students’ motivation to learn, but main effects only for their perceptions of interactional fairness. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed in light of self-determination, facework, approach-avoidance, and feedback intervention theories.