Could Instructor Talk Drive CURE Effectiveness? A Comparative Study of Instructor Talk in Introductory Lab Courses

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are thought to enhance students' motivation to continue in college, in science, and in research. Yet, how CUREs enhance student motivation is largely undefined. Theories of instructor immediacy, self-efficacy, and task values suggest that CURE instructors may talk in ways that influence students' motivational beliefs. To set the stage for testing this hypothesis, we characterized the non-content-related talk of instructors teaching 48 introductory biology lab courses, half CUREs and half non-CUREs. We identified 14 types of instructor talk that fit these theoretical perspectives: fostering students' closeness with their instructor (i.e., immediacy talk), building students' confidence in their scientific abilities (i.e., self-efficacy talk), and promoting students' sense of worth in their work (i.e., task value talk). Course type had a medium effect on talk type, with CURE instructors utilizing more immediacy, self-efficacy, and task values talk than non-CURE instructors, but also showing more variation in these types of talk. Our results suggest that motivation-related instructor talk is more prevalent in CUREs than in non-CUREs, but wide variation in CURE instructor talk indicates additional investigation is needed before non-content talk can be considered a mechanism for the motivational influences of CUREs.