Does Emotional Support as a Positive Learning Environment Improve Students’ Help-Seeking Behavior?

Background: It is interesting to note that lecturer and students have significant roles in creating class dynamic. The aim of this research was to investigate how emotional support by lecturer influenced students’ help-seeking. Both variables had several constructs. There are two dimensions of emotional support, positive climate and lecture sensitivity and three kinds of help-seeking behaviour including adaptive help-seeking, expedient help-seeking, and avoidance help-seeking. Emotional support positively predicted adaptive and expedient help-seeking behaviour and also negatively projected avoidance help-seeking. There were three hypotheses built. Method: A group of 193 college students from two different years reported the perception of their positive climate, lecture sensitivity, adaptive help-seeking, expedient help-seeking, and avoidance help-seeking. The scales were given using convenience sampling when the students had a class. Results: The analysis showed that the emotional support as a whole decrease avoidance help-seeking. Furthermore, positive climate only correlated with expedient help-seeking. However, different year of study did not determine in minimizing avoidance help-seeking and also positive climate of the class. Conclusion: Emotional support that was provided by lecturer triggers positive learning environment. Students were prone to be active when they faced difficulties. In addition, they are ready to participate in the class activities. In the contrary, although sophomore students have a longer time to adapt, in which is represented by year of study, had not a significant influence in inhibiting negative learning behavior such as expedient and also avoidance help-seeking.