Constructing and validating a teacher immediacy scale from a Chinese perspective and exploring the overall immediacy-learning relationship

The primary purpose of the current study was two-fold: to construct and validate a teacher immediacy scale from a Chinese cultural perspective and to explore the overall relationship between teacher immediacy and student cognitive and affective learning through the research conducted in Chinese college classrooms. The study included two consecutive phases. Phase One was primarily qualitative, focusing on the conceptualization of teacher immediacy and the operationalization of a teacher immediacy scale through open-ended questionnaires with 45 participants, two focus group interviews, and follow-up Likert-type questionnaires with 53 participants. Three dimensions of teacher immediacy were generated via the constant comparative method from the qualitative data: instructional, relational, and personal immediacy and 38 items were operationalized into the Chinese Teacher Immediacy Scale (CTIS).; Phase Two was mostly quantitative, dealing with the validation of the CTIS with 421 participants via confirmatory factor analysis and Pearson correlation, and 15 items were retained in the final CTIS. The CTIS had a high reliability of .92, and Pearson correlation indicated it had good construct validity too. Phase Two also involved an empirical exploration of the overall relationship between teacher immediacy and student affective and cognitive learning. The integrating model reflecting the overall immediacy-learning relationship model was generated via structural equation modeling. The integrating model indicated that teacher immediacy had both a direct path and an indirect path mediated via affective learning and state motivation, to cognitive learning. SEM fit indices revealed that the integrating model had a good model fit, statistically being superior to the three alternative models: the learning model, the motivation model, and the affective learning model.; To conclude, this study represents an innovative attempt to examine teacher immediacy from a Chinese perspective, and to investigate the immediacy-learning relationship with a Chinese-derived teacher immediacy scale and Chinese students. This study from a non-U.S. perspective helps to enrich and expand our current research on teacher immediacy from the U.S. perspective. More emic research from non-U.S. perspectives should be strengthened in the field of instructional communication to decipher indigenous teacher communication behaviors and phenomena and to advance our understanding of effective teacher communication behaviors across cultures.