Student emotions in class: The relative importance of teachers and their interpersonal relations with students

TLDR: In this paper, the importance of teachers in relation to the emotions students experience in class was highlighted, arguing that the specific relationship that evolves between teachers and students drives students' emotional experiences.

About: This article is published in Learning and Instruction.The article was published on 2018-02-01 and is currently open access. It has received 108 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Interpersonal relationship & Interpersonal communication.

Figures

Table 1 Descriptives and zero-order correlations among measures at the teacher-student level.

Table 4 Intraclass correlations for agency and communion.

Fig. 1. On top, a ‘classical’ sample structure is depicted with students completely nested in classes, which are on their turn completely nested in teachers. Below, a for many educational settings more realistic cross-classified structure is depicted, in which teachers teach multiple classes, and students are taught by multiple teachers. The Teacher-Student Pairing level represents single observations or questionnaires. All four depicted levels in the lower panel are potential sources of variability in student emotions.

Table 2 Enjoyment: Cross-classified variance component model (M1) and conditional models including teacher interpersonal agency and communion (M2) and background variables (M3).

Table 3 Anxiety: Cross-classified variance component model (M1) and conditional models including teacher interpersonal agency and communion (M2) and background variables (M3).

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in "Student emotions in class: the relative importance of teachers and their interpersonal relations with students" ?

This study highlights the importance of teachers in relation to the emotions students experience in class. The authors decompose variability in student emotions not only into the commonly investigated student and teacher facets but also into facets representing specific pairings of teachers with classes and students ( so-called relationship effects ). Furthermore, the way that teachers interpersonally relate to their students is highly predictive of student emotions. 

Q2. What are the future works mentioned in the paper "Student emotions in class: the relative importance of teachers and their interpersonal relations with students" ?

Future research needs to focus on investigating causality and reciprocity between teacher behaviour and student emotions. Future research needs to verify this. The application of cross-classified multilevel modelling is still in its infancy, as illustrated by the restricted possibilities of many statistical software packages. Althoughwebelieve such an approach isworthwhile and sometimes necessary, the authors certainly do not want to suggest that it is the best choice in most contexts and studies.