Chinese EFL Students' Perceptions of Classroom Justice: The Impact of Teachers' Caring and Immediacy

The correlation between students' perceptions of three dimensions of classroom justice, teacher immediacy, and teacher caring has been found important since it can provide a learning ambiance for students in which they can enthusiastically learn a new language. To find out this relationship, the present study has strived to probe into the interplay between the aforementioned variables and to see whether teacher caring and teacher immediacy can predict students' perception of justice. In so doing, the participants of this study were 1,178 Chinese EFL students of various ages and education levels. Three instruments were utilized in this study to perceive the students' perception of classroom justice, teacher immediacy, and teacher caring. To collect the data, these instruments were distributed through an online survey software called Wenjuanxing (Questionnaire Star). Results demonstrated that there was a positive association among these three variables, and utilizing SEM analyses, it was found that both teacher immediacy and teacher caring predict students' perception of classroom justice that implies teachers who are found to be more caring and give appropriate verbal and non-verbal immediacy where needed, are perceived to change the students' understanding of the classroom justice to a positive attitude. Finally, the results of this study were discussed regarding previous findings, and accordingly, some implications were put forward in the EFL context.

The Effect of Teacher Caring Behavior and Teacher Praise on Students’ Engagement in EFL Classrooms

The emergent respect for the prominence of engagement in the present education has made it one of the most widespread inquiry issues that it has been regarded as the ultimate target of learning. In the language teaching field, the idea of student activities for learning is intensely rooted in the prevailing standards of effective language learning, which considers language communication and interaction as analytical for language improvement. Moreover, teachers as center of learning process is the most prominent research attention, and teachers play a key role in regulating the education process as well as students’ learning achievement. However, there is an absence of research which have considered teachers’ care and praise among all positive interpersonal behavior and its significant effect on students’ engagement. So, the present review attempts to focus on teacher care and praise, and their effects on student engagement in EFL classrooms. Subsequently, some implications are presented to clarify the practice of teachers, students, teacher educators, and materials developers.

‘If They Don’t Care, I Don’t Care’: Millennial and Generation Z Students and the Impact of Faculty Caring

This article draws on a qualitative study of 31 Millennial and Generation Z students to examine the meaning of teacher “caring” in a higher education context. Prior research clearly documents the importance of caring to student engagement, although much of that scholarship focuses on secondary schooling. Research also examines the changing demographics of higher education and new expectations brought to college classrooms by Millennials and others. In this article, we connect the existing research on caring and on generational differences to explore how traditional-aged undergraduates define caring and the degree to which that impacts their willingness to learn. Our findings indicate that students value approachability and relatability as traits in a caring professor; we also find that in-class pedagogical practices can dramatically demonstrate care or lack thereof. Our research suggests that the student success agenda in higher education must take in-class teaching practices seriously in order to impact students’ engagement and motivation to learn.

Con Cariño: Teacher Caring, Math Self-Efficacy, and Math Achievement among Hispanic English Learners

Background/Context How do we account for the persistence of below-average math test score performance among California Hispanics who are fluent in English, as well as Spanish-dominant English learners? Recent studies have attributed the problem to an overly rigid focus on “what works” in curriculum and fluency in English to the veritable neglect of the social components of teaching and learning—particularly caring. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study We investigated Hispanic elementary student perceptions of teacher caring in relation to their math self-efficacy and math test performance, and we specify the sequence of the relationship: Caring teachers bolster student self-efficacy in math, which in turn bolsters math test scores. Moreover, we sought to examine whether the meditational relationships among the variables were moderated by English language proficiency. Research Design Our correlational/comparative analyses were based on longitudinal data for 1,456 Hispanic students nested in 84 fifth- or sixth-grade classrooms in the spring of 2007. Students were either fluent English speakers (EFs, n = 799) or English learners (ELs, n = 657). We secured student self-report measures of teacher caring and math self-efficacy using the Student Motivation Questionnaire, and scores from the California Standards Test for Mathematics served as the primary dependent variable. While controlling for background variables, prior math achievement, and prior math self-efficacy where appropriate, we employed a well-known framework and a series of multilevel regression models to examine our hypothesis of moderated mediation. Conclusions/Recommendations For all study participants, caring teachers bolstered can-do attitudes in math, which in turn positively impacted math test scores. We identified two principal differences, however, in support of our hypothesis of moderated mediation that indicate that the total effect of teacher caring is larger among ELs. First, the magnitude of the direct link between teacher caring and math self-efficacy was more pronounced among ELs. Second, teacher caring was only partially mediated by math self-efficacy for ELs, whereas for EFs, the positive influence of teacher caring on math scores was completely mediated by math self-efficacy. Several issues come to light when the literature on how communication across cultural and language barriers impacts perceptions of caring is examined concurrently with our findings. Among them is the deemphasis of bilingual ability in California's recent mandate for more authorizations to teach ELs, which may create a barrier to fostering caring teacher–student and teacher–parent relations for Hispanic EFs and especially Hispanic ELs, whose math achievement would otherwise stand to gain.