The Combined Effects of Instructor Communicative Behaviors,Instructor Credibility,and Student Personality Traits on Incivility in the College Classroom

This study investigated the combined role of instructor communication variables (nonverbal immediacy and self-disclosure), instructor credibility (competence, caring, and trustworthiness), and student personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness) in predicting students’ uncivil behaviors in class. A total of 406 students completed online questionnaires regarding the instructor of the class they attended prior to the one in which the study was administered. Personality and instructor behavior variables contributed approximately equally to explaining variance in student incivility. Students’ conscientiousness and agreeableness had direct negative relationships with incivility, whereas instructors’ amount and negativity of self-disclosure had direct positive relationships with incivility.     

Perceived efficacy of teachers in Macao and their alacrity to engage with inclusive education

ABSTRACT

This paper reports findings of a mixed methods study examining private school teachers’ perceptions of efficacy in dealing with the challenges presented by inclusive education in Macao. This is highly pertinent after the Government invited consultation to propose changes to amendments of the Decree Law of 1996 concerning the education of students with Special Education Needs (SEN) which will likely see private schools being required to accept these students in the future. Within the context of teacher preparedness for inclusive education, the study found that a number of teachers felt that they were not at all prepared to teach students with SEN. Whilst some teachers suggested that they lacked skills and knowledge in teaching in inclusive classrooms, some felt overwhelmed with the challenges. The teachers proposed that they would need to know how to provide instructional adaptations and modifications to support students with SEN. Implications for continuous development of teacher training and education are discussed within the context of improving teacher efficacy and how private school teachers could better respond to the challenges of inclusive education in Macao.     

Age-Related Differences in Sensitivity to Facial Trustworthiness: Perceptual Representation and the Role of Emotional Development

The ability to discriminate social signals from faces is a fundamental component of human social interactions whose developmental origins are still debated. In this study, 5-year-old (N = 29) and 7-year-old children (N = 31) and adults (N = 34) made perceptual similarity and trustworthiness judgments on a set of female faces varying in level of expressed trustworthiness. All groups represented perceived similarity of the faces as a function of trustworthiness intensity, but such representation becomes more fine-grained with development. Moreover, 5-year-olds' accuracy in choosing the more trustworthy face in a pair varied as a function of children's score at the Test of Emotion Comprehension, suggesting that the ability to perform face-to-trait inferences is related to the development of emotional understanding.