VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND STUDENT AFFECTIVE LEARNING

RESEARCH CRITIQUE Perceptions of Instructors Verbal Aggressiveness and Physical Education Students Affective Learning Seongsoo Kim Research Methods in Psychology Nov 8, 2013

VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND STUDENT AFFCTIVE LEARNING Purpose of study The purpose of this study done on this article was to examine the relationships between university instructors verbal aggressiveness and physical education undergraduate students

affect towards the course, behavior, the instructor, and satisfaction. Furthermore, the study aimed to examine the psychometric integrity of an affective learning scale. Introduction The authors goal of this study was to examine the relationship between university instructors verbal aggressiveness and physical education undergraduate students affect towards the course, behavior, the instructor, and satisfaction. The author believes that the way teachers communicate in a classroom with their students has a great effect on the learning process and therefore, the author wanted to support the previous studies that were done on this subject in various settings. The author clearly states the hypothesis in this study, the systematic use of verbal aggressiveness in the educational context and consequently, in the physical education context has a negative influence on the 3 dimensions of affective learning. To examine the relationship between the verbal aggressiveness and student affective learning, I would have to have what the author did for the study. I would have to create a setting where I can observe the students are getting the verbal aggressiveness by their instructor and the reflected students performance on a given scale of test or their satisfaction. If there is any positive correlation in this subject, the students should reveal better grade or performance, and if the negative correlation is detected there then the study will support the hypothesis.

VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND STUDENT AFFCTIVE LEARNING Method Total number of 146 (67 men, 77women, and 2 non-identified by sex) University of Thessaly students. Their ages ranged from 18-22 years old. If I were to conduct a research on

this subject, I would have picked out more than 1 school and widen up the age group to even 1624 years range. I thought that the research was too secluded. For the procedure when assessing the verbal aggressiveness, the author had the participants to complete questionnaires in a classroom environment. The Greek version of the Verbal Aggressiveness Questionnaire (Bekiari, Digelidis, Hatzigeorgiadis, and Sakellarious, 2005) was the tool that the author used to do the survey. The internal consistency of the scale has been supported. And the scale is comprised of eight items assessing verbally aggressive behavior such as, insults students, makes negative judgments of students ability. Then the participants were asked to respond on a 5-point Likert-type scale with 1 being Strongly disagree and 5 being Strongly agree. To measure the affective learning, a scale assessing affective learning was administered. The scale that the author was what was common for the Greek people to use, and the scale assesses 3 general dimensions of affect: affect towards the content, affect towards the instructor, and affect towards the behavior of the instructor. The administered scale compromise 14 items: 4 describing affect towards the content of the class, 5 describing affect towards the teacher, and 5 describing behavior. The same 5-point Likert-type scale with 1 being Strongly disagree and 5 being Strongly agree was used to score. Participants satisfaction was measured with Myers and Knoxs (2000) procedure, a three-item scale to assess students overall satisfaction was administered along with the affective learning scale.

VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND STUDENT AFFCTIVE LEARNING Results The results of this study came out the way the author expected to be there was no

unexpected outcome. . The results imply that there is a negative relationship between perceptions of the instructors verbal aggressiveness and students affect toward the course, course behaviors, the instructor, and students satisfaction. Just like how I expected from the beginning, the perceived verbal aggression could predict variance in all the dependent variables, but mostly towards the instructor and the students satisfaction. The authors thinks that the use of verbally aggressive messages seems to have a global effect on students attitudes, and that the perceptions of instructors verbal aggressiveness are negatively related to good classroom climate. Also the research has also supported that the instructors perceived verbal aggressiveness is negatively related to students state motivation, perceived affective and cognitive learning, and satisfaction. Discussion Many studies done in the past regarding the correlation between verbal aggression and student affective learning proved that the verbal aggression has negative influence on the students. Generally, when instructors were perceived to use confirming verbal communication behaviors, students reported better affective learning and according to Myers (2002), students reports of instructors who were perceived as low in verbal aggressiveness were positively correlated with their own reports of state motivation, affective learning, cognitive learning, and satisfaction. Overall, verbal aggressiveness seems detrimental for developing an appropriate environment for the promotion of learning and individual growth. The study has proven the stated hypothesis in the beginning, but the author left few points to consider for the further study for this topic: such as, Future research could explore additional

VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND STUDENT AFFCTIVE LEARNING aspects of the classroom environment in relation to verbal aggressiveness; in-depth interviews with students would reveal useful information; differences in relation to students gender. In closing, what additional studies might I suggest? It would ne interesting to study this phenomenon in other populations where the students are stressed about their education (perhaps South Korea), and doing a study over a wider group of age would be interesting.

VERBAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND STUDENT AFFCTIVE LEARNING References Bekiari, A. 2012. Perceptions of Instructors Verbal Aggressiveness and Physical Education Students Affective Learning. Perceptual and Motor Skills: Exercise and Sport, 115, 1, 325-335.