A State-Trait Analysis of Lesson- and Classroom-Specific Variation in Teacher Enthusiasm and Student Engagement

• In Event: Teachers' Motivation to Teach: What Matters?

Abstract

Theoretical Framework
Teachers’ enthusiasm and students’ engagement constitute key ingredients of successful classrooms because they can influence not only students’ learning outcomes but also students’ and teachers’ well-being, commitment, and the quality of instructional processes (Christenson et al., 2012; Keller et al., 2016; Richardson et al., 2014). Although prior research has supported emotional transmission processes between teachers and students in the classroom (Frenzel et al., 2018), there is a still a lack of research examining the interplay between teachers’ and students’ experiences and their respective perceptions in specific lessons and over time.
Purpose
Using data from five consecutive math lessons, we investigated both classroom-specific and lesson-specific co-variation in teachers’ enthusiasm and students’ engagement (each rated by both teachers and students). We thus considered both teachers’ and students’ affective-motivational experiences as key contributors to a classroom’s motivational climate, which we define as teachers’ and students’ shared experiences in a given instructional setting.
Method
At the end of five consecutive math lessons, 1,537 ninth-grade students and their 70 teachers reported on their perceptions of teacher enthusiasm and student engagement. A multilevel multitrait-multistate-analysis (with students nested in lessons nested in classrooms/teachers) was used to estimate a latent motivational climate factor capturing shared lesson-specific variance in teachers’ and students’ reports at the lesson level and four trait factors capturing consistent variance in teacher- and student-reported teacher enthusiasm and student engagement at the classroom level (see Figure 1). On the basis of this decomposition of variance, we obtained estimates of consistency and occasion-specificity (Table 1; Geiser et al., 2013): Consistency refers to the proportion of variance that is due to classroom-specific trait effects, whereas occasion-specificity refers to the proportion of variance that is explained by shared situational and person × situation interactions across the four indicators.
Results
We found substantial “trait-like” consistency in all four motivational measures across lessons, with student-perceived teacher enthusiasm showing the highest consistency (see Table 1). However, there were also systematic “state-like” lesson-to-lesson fluctuations in the shared motivational climate. Furthermore, there were substantial correlations between all trait factors at the classroom level (see Figure 1), with the pattern of associations suggesting rater-specific effects. On the lesson level, all four indicators showed substantial factor loadings on a common factor of lesson-specific motivational climate. This finding corroborates the assumption that teacher enthusiasm and student engagement have a shared cause that results from shared situational influences and person × situation interactions. Teacher gender, teaching experience, class-level achievement, and the availability of motivationally supportive instructional interventions failed to explain substantial variance in these associations.
Significance
Our findings provide support for trait-like stability and state-like fluctuations in teacher enthusiasm and student engagement as indicators of a classroom’s motivational climate. Furthermore, we found that teacher and student perceptions of teacher enthusiasm and student engagement were associated at the classroom level as well as at the situational level, which is in line with the idea that teacher enthusiasm and student engagement are reciprocally related over time and in the specific situation, consistent with the assumption of emotional contagion.

Authors

• Hanna Gaspard, TU Dortmund University

• Fani Lauermann, TU Dortmund University