innovative faculty members as they both tend to have students with larger cognitive style

gap? Puccio et al. recommended that researchers examine faculty members' instructional

discourse to identify adaptive and innovative components that may trigger stress. The

researcher echoes this recommendation but would also include examining how adaptive

and innovative students structure new knowledge (Kuhn, 1970). For example, Kirton's

(2003) A-I theory suggests that the adaptive faculty member would have a narrow and

detailed focus on course material, uses rules to solve problems and does not discuss

irrelevant topics. An innovative student may find working with this adaptive faculty

member stressful because he has to cope to stay focused, use rules and discuss only

relevant topics in the process of learning. An adaptive student on the other hand, may

learn with his own narrow focus, his own rules and his own ties to relevancy which is

different than the faculty member's. Therefore the adaptive student taught by an adaptive

faculty member may have increased levels of stress as the student is still forced to

structure knowledge differently than he prefers (Kuhn, 1970). More research is needed to

determine if this explanation is upheld in the undergraduate classroom.

 The MSLQ was used to determine level of student motivation in each course.

Throughout the nine courses total motivation means ranged from 29.31 (Class A) to

32.42 (Class D) with no construct mean score in any class exceeding one standard

deviation from the norm (Pintrich et al., 1991).

 A one-way ANOVA was conducted to examine significant differences of student

motivation scores between courses taught by the adaptive teacher group, middle score

teacher group and innovative teacher group. A significant difference was found between

the three groups and a Bonferroni post-hoc test was conducted to further examine