ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
The Impact of Taekwondo Instructors' Nonverbal Communication on Student Engagement in Liberal Arts Education: Evidence from Chinese Universities
Provisionally accepted
- Henan University, Kaifeng, China
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This study analyzes the impact of Taekwondo instructors' nonverbal communication (NVC) on student engagement, operationalized as a multilevel construct (emotional, cognitive, and behavioral). Surveying 520 students in general education Taekwondo courses at five Chinese universities, we mapped Positive Emotions (as Emotional Engagement), Classroom Satisfaction (as Cognitive Engagement), and Recommendation Intention (as Behavioral Engagement). The analysis revealed a sequential process of engagement: First, Emotional Engagement (Positive Emotions) was significantly predicted by foundational NVC cues: visual, auditory, and body language. Second, Cognitive Engagement (Classroom Satisfaction) was similarly predicted by appearance, body, and auditory language. Third, high-level Behavioral Engagement (Recommendation Intention) was predicted by all four components: appearance, auditory, body, and spatial language. This study's contribution is twofold: It provides a novel, tripartite model for assessing NVC's total impact in sport pedagogy and demonstrates how engagement is built. We propose a sequential model where NVC first builds foundational trust and value (emotional/cognitive), and then, through spatial cues, fosters the sense of belonging necessary for behavioral advocacy. This provides crucial data for the revitalization and teacher training of liberal arts Taekwondo classrooms.
Keywords: General Education Taekwondo, Nonverbal Communication, Classroom Engagement Behavior, Positive emotions, Recommended Intention
Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 14 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LONG and GU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: YIMENG GU, guyimeng2024@163.com
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