Relations Between Teacher Motivation and Student Engagement and Achievement in Math Across School Contexts

• In Event: 34.035 - Teachers' Motivations and the Classroom: Relations Across Diverse Educational Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
Teacher turnover rates and declines in student engagement have increased researchers’ attention on teachers’ motivation. Watt and Richardson (2014)’s FIT-Choice theory posits that teachers’ initial motivations for teaching impact their decisions to become and stay teachers. Empirical work demonstrates that pre-service teachers’ competence beliefs and values predict whether they become teachers (Nie et al., 2012). However, little work has examined how in-service teachers’ competence beliefs and values may relate to student engagement and achievement. Similarly, little work has explored how these relationships may differ across school contexts (e.g., high- vs. low-performing, suburban vs. urban, and public vs. charter schools), even though these contexts are known to shape teachers’ experiences (Knoblauch & Chase, 2015; Newhook, 2010). Connecting literature on teacher motivation and school context, we speculate that the relations between teacher motivation and student engagement and achievement in math may vary depending on the surrounding context. We focus on math because it is assessed in state-mandated standardized tests that play a key role in shaping school contexts through pressure to improve test scores. In the present study, we used quantitative survey methods to explore two research questions:
1. Do teachers’ motivations for teaching predict student behavioral (BE), cognitive (CE) and emotional (EE) engagement and course grades in math?
2. Do the relationships between teachers’ motivations and student math engagement and math grades vary by school context?

Sample
The sample consisted of 2,945 6th-12th grade students and 46 math teachers from three school districts in the Northeast United States. The districts included one high-achieving suburban public school, one low-performing urban charter school, and one low-performing urban public school.

Method
We used multi-level modeling nesting students within teachers, controlling for a variety of student and teacher demographic characteristics.

Results
When we combined samples from all three districts, we found no significant relationships between teacher motivation and student engagement and achievement in math (Table 2). Yet, when we separated the sample by district, we found significant and varying relationships between teacher motivation and student outcomes in math (Tables 3 – 5). Personal utility value positively predicted student EE and math grades in the high-performing suburban public district, but was negatively related to math grades in the low-performing urban charter district and was negatively related to BE and CE in the low-performing urban public district. Similarly, teacher self-efficacy, was positively associated with EE in the high-performing suburban public district, was positively related to BE, EE, and CE but negatively related to math grades in the low-performing urban charter district, and was not related to engagement or math grade in the low-performing urban public district. Social utility value was not associated with student engagement or achievement in math in any of the three districts. These findings suggest that teacher motivation can differentially predict student engagement and achievement in math when the school context is taken into account. More empirical and theoretical work is needed to fully understand the role school context has in the relations between teacher motivation and student academic outcomes in math.

Authors

• Alyssa Parr, University of Pittsburgh

• Jessica R Gladstone, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Ming-Te Wang, University of Pittsburgh