A CROSS-CULTURAL AND MULTI-BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NONVERBAL IMMEDIACY AND TEACHER EVALUATION

Nonverbal immediacy of teachers has been. demonstrated to be substanti ally associated with increased cognitive and affective learning in stu dents. The assumption underlying the current research is that teacher communication behaviors that enhance student learning will also enhanc e positive evaluations of teachers by those students. This study sough t so determine what specific teacher nonverbal immediacy behaviors are most associated with students' evaluations of their teachers. Our res earch was based oz data drawn from the cultures of Australia, Finland, and Puerto Rico as well as the dominant United States culture. Each s tudy was conducted in the primary language of the sample studied. The results of this research permit a comparison of the relationship betwe en nonverbal immediacy and teacher evaluation across diverse cultural and linguistic communities as well as multi-cultural comparisons of th e importance of individual immediacy behaviors to teacher evaluation.