It's All Show? Lesson Profiles in Experienced and Displayed Teacher Enthusiasm

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

Abstract

During the last decade, teacher enthusiasm has re-emerged in educational research, assuming the mantle of a well-defined psychological construct in considering it as teachers’ motivational characteristic, which captures the enjoyment they experience during teaching (e.g., Kunter et al., 2008). Prior to that, however, teacher enthusiasm – albeit not clearly defined – was operationalized as teachers’ enthusiastic, mostly nonverbal behaviors (e.g., Bettencourt, Gillett, Gall, & Hull, 1983). Both conceptualizations of teacher enthusiasm are not integrated, yet could potentially complement each other (see Keller, Woolfolk Hoy, Goetz, & Frenzel, in press). Coming from a largely exploratory angle, the present study aims to identify lesson profiles of these two enthusiasm components (experienced vs. displayed enthusiasm), and investigates whether differences in students’ outcomes are due to lesson profiles.

Over a period of 2-3 weeks, German mathematics teachers (N = 39) and their classes evaluated each mathematics lesson on the basis of short questionnaires, obtaining in total evaluations of N = 316 lessons. With respect to the bygone lesson, teachers rated their experienced enthusiasm (EE). Students reported on displayed enthusiasm (DE) of the teacher as well as their own enjoyment, boredom and intrinsic value; for each lesson, students’ evaluations were aggregated onto the lesson level. Lesson profiles in experienced and displayed enthusiasm were extracted by means of latent profile analyses utilizing Mplus 7 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2012).

Overall, teachers reported high levels of EE, which was in turn perceived by students (see Table 1). Both enthusiasm forms correlated moderately on the lesson level (r = .29). Intraclass correlations revealed that whereas only 20% of variance in EE lies between teachers, for DE this number was considerably higher at 70%.

Based on statistical fit indices (Table 2) and interpretability, four profiles were extracted (see Figure 1). Profile 1 included only n = 12 lessons and is not of further interest.

Profiles 3 and 4 have similarly high values in EE, but only in Profile 4 are teachers also perceived as highly enthusiastic whereas in Profile 3 DE is rather low. Thereby, when teachers’ EE coincides with behavioral elements and becomes visible (authentic enthusiasm), students exhibit more positive outcomes (see Figure 2) compared to when teachers’ EE stays hidden (hidden enthusiasm).

Profiles 2 and 4, although similar in DE, differ in their extent of EE: Whereas in authentic enthusiasm this EE is rather high, it is considerably lower in Profile 2. Thus, when low EE is nevertheless expressed (fake enthusiasm), the picture in students’ outcomes is more negative compared to authentic enthusiasm (see Figure 2).

A synthesis of our lesson profiles lets us conclude that showing enthusiasm is not enough: It also has to coincide with teachers’ internally experienced enthusiasm in the form of enjoyment for teaching to unfold its potential with regards to students’ outcomes. Due to the relatively small number of teachers under investigation, it was not possible to determine interindividual differences in enthusiasm profiles or address their stability or variability within teachers. This would be a promising venue for future research.

Authors

• Melanie M. Keller, University of Kiel

• Eva Susann Becker, University of Zurich