Patterns of motivating teaching behaviour and student engagement: a microanalytic approach

Development of competencies in secondary education through the motivational style of autonomy support

Background

The aim of the study was to test the effect of a meta-disciplinary intervention based on the motivational style of autonomy support on the development of competencies in secondary school students. It was carried out by means of a quasi-experimental design and lasted for three months.

Methods

A total of 62 students between the ages of 12 and 16 (M = 13.61; SD = 1.16) participated, with 33 in the experimental group and 29 in the control group, along with 12 teachers (7 in the intervention group and 5 in the control group). The study measured teaching motivational style, satisfaction of basic psychological needs, motivation, and key competencies.

Results

The results demonstrate improvements in the autonomy-supportive motivational style, satisfaction of the basic psychological need for autonomy, autonomous motivation, and competencies in the experimental group, while the control group exhibited an increase in the chaos style.

Conclusions

These findings reveal the positive impact of the supportive motivational style on the development of key competencies establishing it as an active, valid, and reliable methodology to motivate secondary school students.

Exploring student engagement in virtual classrooms: a person-centred approach using cluster analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify student clusters based on patterns of behavioural, cognitive, emotional, collaborative and social engagement in virtual classrooms, within the context of higher education. The study also attempts to explore the differences amongst the student clusters with respect to various motivating and demotivating teaching behaviours.

Design/methodology/approach

The study relies on the self-determination theory to describe the dynamics related to various motivating and demotivating teaching behaviours and five different dimensions of student engagement in virtual classrooms. The data were collected from a convenience sample of 831 students from higher educational institutions in the Delhi – National Capital Region of India. Cluster analysis was performed to classify students into mutually exclusive groups based on five student engagement dimensions.

Findings

The findings revealed three student clusters: ‘fully-engaged’, ‘externally-engaged’ and ‘individually-engaged’ students. The findings also provided insights into varied correlations between specific dimensions of motivating/demotivating teaching behaviours and student engagement.

Originality/value

Considering the multi-dimensionality of student engagement as well as teaching behaviours, the study adopts a person-centred approach to understand different clusters of students in virtual classrooms and investigate the relationship between teaching behaviours and student engagement dimensions.

The impact of teacher attitude and teaching approaches on student demotivation: Disappointment as a mediator

Student demotivation with English as a medium of instruction has attracted increased attention of scholars, particularly in those countries where it is taught as a second or foreign language. While there is a consensus that proficiency in English brings several benefits, it is found that students are demotivated to learn in English. As a result, many studies have tried to investigate the factors that reduce the motivation to learn in English. Drawing on disappointment theory, this study aims to investigate why and how the discouraging attitude of a teacher and discouraging teaching approaches create negative emotions (i.e., disappointment with English as a medium of instruction), which in turn demotivates Chinese students with English as a medium of instruction. This study has adopted a cross-sectional research design. The data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire survey from Chinese students (n = 428) studying in different universities in China. The hypothesized relationships were tested through PLS-based SEM by using Warp-PLS 7.0 software. The findings show that teachers' discouraging attitudes and discouraging teaching approaches are important determinants of student demotivation with English as a medium of instruction. The results also confirm that student disappointment is an important underlying mechanism in the relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables. This study contributes to the literature on student demotivation with English as a medium of instruction by superficially identifying teacher-related factors in China, which were previously overlooked. The implications of this study are that the university administration should monitor the attitude of the teachers toward English, as well as their teaching approaches, in order to curb any potential threat to student motivation. The administration should train the teachers on how to show a positive attitude and follow encouraging teaching approaches. In this way, students' disappointment with the English language and teaching methodology can also be overcome, which will ultimately increase their motivation with English as a medium of instruction in universities.