Abstract

It is investigated to what extent the expectancy of a teaching demand influences learning. The subjects that participated in the present experimental study (N = 36 students of education) learned from worked-out examples in the domain of probability calculus under two different conditions: The experimental group expected to be required to explain similar worked-out examples to a third person, whereas the control group merely anticipated to be tested on similar problems. The results showed that the teaching expectancy decreased the superficiality of studying the worked-out examples, increased, to some extent, anxiety during learning, and lowered intrinsic motivation substantially. These variables did not, however, influence the learning results. The latter were negatively influenced by anxious worry cognitions and were positively associated with the time allocated to construct a sound problem representation. These variables which proved to influence the learning results were, however, not influenced by the teaching expectancy. Thus, learning gains were not affected by the teaching expectancy