The associations between teachers' lesson-specific emotions and observed teacher-student interactions and student engagement.

Abstract

Background: Teachers' emotions while teaching are associated to how they teach. Prior research has evidenced such associations mostly based on teacher or student ratings of different teaching behaviours.

Aims: This study examined the extent to which teachers' self-rated lesson-specific positive and negative emotions are associated with the observed quality of teacher-student interactions in terms of emotional support, classroom organization and instructional support as well as students' behavioural engagement in the same lesson.

Sample: The participants comprised 84 subject teachers (76.2% female) and 907 students (15-16 years old; 50.1% female) from 26 Finnish lower secondary schools.

Methods: The data consisted of video-recordings from a total of 282 lessons (M = 3.36 lessons/teacher). The quality of teacher-student interactions and students' behavioural engagement was assessed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary (CLASS-S) observational instrument. Data regarding teachers' positive and negative emotions were collected at the end of each video-recorded lesson using the In Situations Teacher (InSitu-T) Instrument. The collected data were analysed using cross-classified two-level modelling.

Results and conclusions: The findings revealed that teachers' positive and negative emotions were positively and negatively associated, respectively, with the observed quality of teacher-student interactions in terms of emotional support and classroom organization but not instructional support. The results provide evidence of the associations between teachers' emotions and students' observed behavioural engagement. The findings complement the literature by highlighting the importance of observational data, along with teacher and student ratings.