Is Learning More Fun With an Enthusiastic, Intrinsically Motivated Instructor? Insights From a Field Experiment

• In Event: 41.026 - Show and Tell: How Teachers' Emotional Expressions Shape Student Outcomes

Abstract

Background and Key Idea
In this field experiment, we sought to integrate ideas from research on teacher enthusiasm and the expectancy formation hypothesis. Teacher enthusiasm – specifically, nonverbal behaviors characterized by high expressivity – has been identified consistently as a key facet of high teaching quality (Keller, et al., in press). The expectancy formation hypothesis implies that cues about an interaction partner’s intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation are relevant for one’s own motivation and emotional experiences (Deci & Ryan, 1987; Wild & Enzle, 2002). In support of this hypothesis, Wild and colleagues found that students merely perceiving their teacher as intrinsically (operationalized as “volunteering”) rather than extrinsically motivated (operationalized as “paid”) resulted in increased intrinsic interest and enjoyment of learning (Radel et al., 2010; Wild et al., 1992; Wild et al., 1997). The key idea of the present experiment was to independently manipulate teacher expressivity and supposed teacher motivation and explore effects on students’ perceptions of the teacher, as well as their own motivation and emotion during the lesson.

Methods
In their regular tutorials, 479 students watched one of four variants of a short instructional video on learning strategies. In the videos, an actor used an identical script to deliver the lecture with high or low expressivity. His supposed motivation was manipulated by introducing him as volunteering or paid expert. Subsequently, students filled out a questionnaire assessing their perceptions of the lecturer’s expressiveness, motivation, enjoyment, as well as their own motivation and emotion (all Cronbach’s Alphas≥.71), and a manipulation check. In all further analyses, we only used data from students for whom the teacher motivation manipulation was successful (N=377; 54% female).

Results and Discussion
2x2 ANOVAs were conducted to explore the effects of teacher expressiveness (high vs. low) and supposed teacher motivation (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) on the outcome variables. Results showed all dependent variables were clearly higher for the high expressiveness condition, besides student motivation and subjective learning. Intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic teacher motivation had (small) positive effects on student perceptions of teacher motivation and enjoyment, as well as students’ emotional experiences. Additionally, there was a significant interaction effect on perceived teacher enjoyment and motivation and on subjective learning: Only in the low expressiveness condition was the intrinsically motivated teacher perceived as more joyful and motivated. Furthermore, only in the extrinsic condition were students’ ratings for subjective learning higher in the high expressiveness condition.

Overall, our results confirmed that teacher expressiveness is conducive to teaching quality, even though students could not be “seduced” to believe they learned more from the highly expressive teacher (an important criticism of the "Dr. Fox" studies; see Peer & Babad, 2014). We additionally found partial support for the expectancy formation hypothesis: Students enjoyed the lecture more from a supposedly intrinsically motivated lecturer, but their own motivation was not influenced. These findings imply that up-regulating expressiveness is a recommendable teaching strategy, since it sends a strong cue to students of being engaged and enjoying teaching even in the presence of extrinsic motivation cues (i.e., financial compensation for teaching).

Authors

• Anne C. Frenzel, University of Munich (LMU)

• Jamie Taxer, Stanford University

• Carolin Schwab, University of Munich