The impact of teacher immediacy and misbehaviors on teacher credibility

This research investigated the impact of teacher immediacy and teacher misbehavior on student perceptions of their teachers’ credibility on the dimensions of competence, trustworthiness, and caring (goodwill). While the results of the two studies conducted indicated the presence of strong positive main effects for teacher immediacy and strong negative effects for teacher misbehavior on all three dimensions of credibility (as hypothesized), significant interaction effects were observed between immediacy and misbehavior on all three dimensions of credibility. In most cases when teacher immediacy was low, whether the teacher was in the nonmisbehavior or misbehavior condition made no significant difference‐both produced perceptions of low credibility. In contrast, when teacher immediacy was high, teacher misbehavior significantly lowered perceived credibility. Probing of the interaction results suggested that high immediacy tends to soften the negative impact of teacher misbehavior, particularly on the caring dimension. Since behaviors that are likely to be seen as “misbehaviors”; by students are often unavoidable by teachers, it is very important that teachers maintain high immediacy to protect their credibility in the classroom.