Do Teachers Matter? Students’ Perceptions of Classroom Interactions and Student Engagement

Abstract

The current study examined the associations between students' perceptions of classroom interactions and students' emotional and behavioral engagement. Given the nested structure of the data, multilevel analyses were employed to examine these associations. A total of 1769 Norwegian fifth to tenth graders from 100 classes and 10 schools participated in a web-based survey. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel structural equation modeling. The results indicated that students who perceived high-quality classroom interactions were more engaged in school, and teachers' emotional support showed the strongest association with engagement at both levels. Furthermore, the findings indicated that primary school students were more engaged emotionally than lower secondary school students, and female students were more behaviorally engaged than male students. ARTICLE HISTORY

Primary school students’ perceived social support in relation to study engagement

“…Further, the social support that is perceived to be available and utilised in the classroom (i.e. teacher support and peer support) appears to be essential for promoting study engagement (see Havik and Westergård 2019;Hughes et al 2008;Roorda et al 2011;Ryan and Patrick 2001). Study engagement is primarily realised and constructed in the classroom (see Cook et al 2002;Cohen et al 2000).…”

“…Study engagement is determined by multiple individual and contextual factors (Salmela-Aro and Upadyaya 2014; Upadyaya and Salmela-Aro 2013). In particular, social interactions within the school community are shown to play a central role in the development and maintenance of students' study engagement (Havik and Westergård 2019;Roorda et al 2011;Wang and Eccles 2012). In fact, there is tentative evidence suggesting that study engagement can become epidemic and spread across the school community (Tuominen-Soini and Salmela-Aro 2014; see also Kindermann 2007;Kiuru et al 2009), potentially resulting in differences between classes and schools in terms of perceived study engagement.…”

“…In addition, explicit information from teachers about the educational expectations and ways of effectively achieving these outcomes (i.e. informational support such as constructive feedback) is related to elevated levels of study engagement (Havik and Westergård 2019;Jang et al 2010).…”

“…A strong body of evidence shows that social support from teachers, peers, and guardians contributes to study engagement (Estell and Perdue 2013;Havik and Westergård 2019;Kiefer et al 2015;Quin 2017;Roorda et al 2011;Wang and Eccles 2012). However, our understanding of the Finnish primary school students' social support system, and how it contributes to study engagement, is insufficient.…”

Student Disaffection: The Contribution of Greek In-service Kindergarten Teachers in Engaging Each Preschooler in Learning

“…In general, the quality of student-teacher relations contributes to developing either "cycles of student engagement" or "cycles of disaffection" [1,14,16,19,20]. Teachers' emotional and instructional support is communicated to students and has a pervasive impact on the way in which students feel that their needs are met [4,[21][22][23][24][25][26]. In fact, teacher's support facilitates student engagement in learning [1,10,11,16,19,25].…”