Peers and Instructors as Sources of Distraction from a Cognitive Load Perspective
Terms to define
Classroom distractions are things that divert the attention and focus of students from primary classroom activities, including information processing (Frisby et al., 2018).
Cognitive processing capacity relates to the ability of a student to digest the information and retain what is relevant to them.
Anti-citizenship behaviors refer to those intentional activities that students engage in while in class that distract them as well as other students who witness these activities and may include jokes, a late arrival in class, fidgeting, among others (Frisby et al., 2018).
Cognitive lead is associated with the amount of information that students can retain or hold at one time. That is the amount of cognitive effort that a student will require to perform the processing one at a time.
Research questions
- Which peer behaviors reported by students as incivilities are also distracting in the classroom?
- Which instructor (mis)behaviors do students report are also distracting in the classroom?
- Does the classroom distraction scale demonstrate adequate model fit?
- What are the differences in (a) perceived distraction and (b) cognitive load for each of the student and instructor behaviors identified?
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The study had one hypothesis: Classroom distraction and cognitive load will be positively correlated.
Major claim
The study shows that the majority of instructors engage in distractive behaviors, mostly including incompetence or indolence, which is followed by being offensive and lastly, inadequate class management skills (Frisby et al., 2018). Besides, the study reveals that anti-citizenship behaviors are common among students, and the common ones are related to etiquette, technology, and, lastly, participation. Instructor‘s distracting behaviors in order of their rate of distractors are incompetence or lectures and laziness, followed by antagonism or being offensive, and lastly, class management skills. However, the study shows that these instructors’ distracting behaviors do not differ from one another in terms of the level of their distractions. Based on the study results, instructors’ distracting behaviors increased the cognitive load with offensiveness or antagonism, causing the most significant increase, classroom management, and lastly, incompetence, or indolence. However, the differences were not significant.