Abstract

Aims
We investigated teacher emotions and individual students’ engagement in real-time classrooms and considered the role of teachers’ involvement level.

Methods
The sample included 20 teachers in Taiwanese public primary schools and four target students for each teacher (80 target students in all). Teachers reported their own emotions and each student’s engagement at the end of each lesson for a calendar week (nti = 249).

Results
T-tests showed that teacher-student relationships are a reflection of teachers being relatively more involved with students they had both close and conflictual relationships with. For students with whom the teacher was relatively more involved, multilevel structural equation models (MSEM) showed they were more engaged in lessons and had a stronger effect on teachers’ positive and negative emotions.

Conclusion
This study expands the understanding of teacher-student dyads in the real-time classroom by demonstrating the effect of individual students’ engagement on teachers’ positive and negative emotions by taking teachers’ involvement levels into consideration.

Introduction

Teacher and student emotions play an essential role in students’ learning and also in teachers’ teaching careers and their well-being. Investigating teachers’ emotions is important for understanding teachers’ needs and challenges of teaching (Schutz, 2014). Although research has mostly focused on the dynamics between teachers and students generally in the classroom, teachers do react differently to individual students in the classroom and this, in turn, has an impact on both teachers and students (Newberry & Davis, 2008). To understand how students and teachers can foster each other’s positive emotional experiences in the classroom in a reciprocal way, it is important to investigate teacher-student dyads and their relationships and behaviours. However, to date, little is known about teacher-student dyads regarding their behaviours, relationship qualities, and emotional experiences in the classroom.

There has been a growing interest in understanding emotional experiences in school settings with researchers increasingly investigating the importance of linking teachers’ emotions with their students’ engagement and emotions in the classroom (e.g., Frenzel et al., 2021). Drawing on Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2004), teachers’ positive emotions could enhance their own well-being and their ability to deal with the challenges of their work. Theoretical models regarding teacher emotions and well-being suggest that teacher emotions reflect their reactions towards the behaviours of particular students in the classroom (Frenzel, 2014; Spilt et al., 2011). Interestingly, negative student behaviours do not necessarily lead to teachers’ negative emotions. Thus, it is important to consider and investigate how teachers interpret the dyadic relationship with a student. However, most research has focused on finding links between students’ negative behaviour (e.g., teachers’ perceptions of student disruptive behaviour) and higher levels of teacher stress and burnout, and lower levels of well-being. We argue that it is crucial to investigate the effect of individual students’ positive behaviour (e.g., engagement) on teachers’ emotions. Since teachers might experience higher levels of conflict and closeness with students who exhibit more disruptive behaviour from the teachers’ perspective (Spilt & Koomen, 2009), the meaningful effort teachers put into specific students may contribute to teachers’ emotional reactions to students’ behaviours (Spilt et al., 2011).

Results

۴٫۱٫ Descriptive analysis
Table 2 summarises descriptive results (e.g., means, standard deviations, correlations) of the variables. Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations of variables are presented as occurring across lessons, students, and teachers (Level 1), between students (Level 2-a), and between teachers (Level 2-b). Generally, teachers reported relatively high positive emotions across lessons, students, and teachers (M = 3.62–۳٫۶۴) and relatively low negative emotions (M = 1.86). Teachers’ average rating of individual students’ behavioural and emotional engagement was higher than the midpoint of the 5-point Likert Scale. Overall, the correlations revealed a positive relationship between teachers’ positive emotions and student engagement and a negative relationship between teachers’ negative emotions and student engagement.

The intraclass correlation (ICC) demonstrated that between-teacher variability of teacher emotions ranged from 0.60 to 0.61, indicating that most of the variance was from variation between teachers, although a substantial variance accounted for between-lesson variation (approximately 0.38 and 0.40 for positive and negative emotions). Note that there was no between-student variance. This is because teachers rated their own emotions once per lesson (as did each of the four students). Teachers did not report their emotions for each student separately.