Students' Expressed Academic Concern, Learning Outcomes, and Communication Motives

There were two purposes of this study. First, this study sought to examine the extent to which students' expressed academic performance concern to their instructors is associated with the students' learning outcomes (i.e., affective learning, cognitive learning, and use of learning indicators) and to students' motives (i.e., relational, functional, excuse-making, participatory, and sycophantic) for communicating with their instructors. Second, this study sought to determine if students' expressed academic performance concern is a unique reason (i.e., motive) why students communicate with their instructors. Undergraduate students (N = 365) completed a series of self-report measures. The results of Pearson correlations indicated that students' expressed academic performance concern is related positively to their learning outcomes and motives for communicating with their instructors. Furthermore, an exploratory factor analysis revealed that students' expressed academic performance concern is a unique motive for why they communicate with their instructors. These findings coupled with a confirmatory factor analysis also establish concurrent, discriminant, and factorial validity of the newly developed Academic Concern Scale used in this study.