Teacher Immediacy and Decreased Student Quantitative Reasoning Anxiety: The Mediating Effect of Perception

Abstract

There is global concern regarding the increased prevalence of math anxiety among college students, which is credited for a decrease in analytical degree completion rates and lower self-confidence among students in their ability to complete analytical tasks in the real world. The present study identified that, as expected, displays of instructional immediacy related positively to student intrinsic motivation and negatively to student math anxiety in analytical reasoning courses. More importantly, the findings were consistent with a mediated model in which psychological response to immediacy mediated the relationships between instructional immediacy cues and the associated outputs. Implications for theory and instruction are discussed.