Within-Class Associations Between Students’ Academic Characteristics, Teachers’ Student-Specific Motivations, and Teacher Talk in Language-Focused Classes

• In Event: Centering the Psychological Experiences of Pre- and In-Service Teachers Across Contexts and Social Identities

Abstract

Aims/Background
Teaching requires complex and autonomous decision-making with limited resources such as instructional time (Kunter et al., 2013; Lauermann & Butler, 2021). For instance, teachers must manage their limited classroom time to attend to individual student needs, implement in-the-moment instructional adaptations, and may engage in differential treatment (Babad, 1993). Surprisingly, little is known about the psychological underpinnings of such complex teaching-related decisions.

Based on socio-cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997; Lauermann & Butler, 2021), the present study used multi-source, student-specific data to examine the within-class links between (i) students’ academic characteristics (i.e., ability and motivation, assessed via standardized tests, self-reports, and teacher ratings), (ii) teachers’ student-specific motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy and enthusiasm for teaching individual students), and (iii) teachers’ allocation of student-specific teacher talk in German-as-a-second-language (GSL) classrooms (i.e., observed time the teacher talks to a particular student in videotaped classes). We focused on GSL classrooms because such classes require adaptive teaching (Otto et al., 2016). We focused on teachers’ student-specific talking time because it is an essential descriptor of teachers’ instructional behaviors in language-focused classes (Borg, 2006; Ellis, 2005). We examined the interrelations between students’ academic characteristics and teachers’ student-specific motivational beliefs and their predictive effects on teachers’ student-specific talking time (RQ1-RQ2).

Method
Thirty-three GSL teachers and 309 secondary students participated in the [blinded] video study. Validated scales were adapted to refer to individual students (e.g., teachers’ self-efficacy and enthusiasm for teaching individual students). Students’ academic characteristics were assessed via self-reports (intrinsic motivation), teacher ratings (student engagement and language ability), and standardized tests (C-test of language ability). Teachers’ talking time was coded for videotaped classes.

Results/Significance
A multi-level path analysis tested the theorized within-class associations (Figure 2/Table 5). First (RQ1), in a given classroom, students who actively participated in the class (i.e., high behavioral engagement) drew most of the teacher’s verbal attention. Comparatively lower-achieving students received the most verbal attention when differences in behavioral engagement were controlled for. Second (RQ2), teachers felt most efficacious and enthusiastic about teaching students with high teacher-rated emotional engagement and language proficiency. The more efficacious and enthusiastic teachers felt about teaching a given student, the more time they spent talking to that student relative to other students in the same class. However, teachers’ student-specific self-efficacy and enthusiasm did not have incremental predictive effects on teachers’ talking time, controlling for students’ teacher-rated engagement.

Teachers’ within-class distribution of instructional time followed two key pathways. First, behaviorally engaged students appeared to draw their teacher’s verbal attention, indicating more student-directed teacher talk. Second, controlling for differences in students’ behavioral engagement, teachers spent more time talking to students they perceived as less proficient in German. Failure to account for both pathways may be a contributing factor to the mixed findings in prior research, according to which teachers pay more attention either to high-achieving (e.g., Decristan et al., 2020; Lipowsky et al., 2007) or lower-achieving (Denessen et al., 2020; Pohlmann-Rother et al., 2018) students. The results underscore the importance of collecting student-specific and multi-source data to study teachers’ decision-making and classroom behaviors.

Authors

• Fani Lauermann, University of Bonn

• Inga ten Hagen, TU Dortmund University