Confirmation and Community. The Relationships between Teacher Confirmation, Classroom Community, Student Motivation, and Learning

The purpose of this study is to examine sense of classroom community as a potential mediating variable in the model of teacher communicative behaviors (teacher confirmation) to the positive student outcomes of student motivation and affective learning. Two competing models were tested for model fit: the linear-sequential model and the partial-mediator model. Results indicated that while both models achieved adequate fit, the linear-sequential model is best suited for the data and for heuristic purposes. Results are discussed in terms of the general model of instructional communication (McCroskey, Valencic, & Richmond, 2004) and ways to use instructor communicative behaviors to improve the sense of classroom community.