Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies, Online ISSN 2278-8808, SJIF 2016 = 6.17, www.srjis.com UGC Approved Sr. No.49366, NOV-DEC 2017, VOL- 4/37 https://doi.org/10.21922/srjis.v4i37.10585
TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS: THE EMOTIONAL COMPONENTS OF STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIP Chhabilata Dei Reader in Psychology, MangalaMahavidyalaya, Kakatpur, Puri, Odisha, India haresh.mishra@yahoo.com
The study examined the impact of perceived teacher effectiveness on the experienced emotion of primary school children. The sample comprised of 300 college student including boys and girls from different majors. The subjects were asked to remember their primary school years to respond to the questionnaires relating to their perception of an effective and an ineffective teacher and their experienced emotion in the classes of those teachers. The results showed that perceived effective teachers have significant impact on the experience of positive and constructive emotions of primary school children. On the other hand, although ineffective teachers significantly contributed to experience negative emotions, those are less influencing than the positive impact of effective teachers. Discriminant analysis pointed to 11 emotions in which effective teachers have significant discriminant power from ineffective teachers. Regression analyses pointed out that 39% of variances for perceived effectiveness of teachers are explained by 11 emotions. Likewise, 31% of the variances for perceived ineffectiveness of teachers were explained by 9 emotions. From these findings, it is derived that addressing students’ emotion in the classroom is one of the significant factors of teacher effectiveness. Primary school student responds to positive emotions more than negative emotions. Keywords: Experienced emotions, perceived teacher effectiveness, discriminant analyses Scholarly Research Journal's is licensed Based on a work at www.srjis.com
Introduction “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” -Einstein Several prior researchershave proved the positive relationship between teacher effectiveness and student achievement, but few studies have examined the degree to which it is influenced by emotionas a context factor (Stephanou&Kyridis, 2008). learning
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(Rosiek&Beghetto, 2009; Schutz&Zembylas, 2009). Previous researchers havedocumented the important role of emotions in student life (Pekrun, 2009), and the perspective of emotions in constructive learning (Frijda, 2009). Teacher is an important source of student emotions in classroom learning. More precisely, it is the students’ interpretations of the teacher’s behavior Copyright © 2017, Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies
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that influence how they feel and learn, not necessarily the instruction in itself (Frenzel, Pekrun, & Goetz, 2007; Stephanou, 2007; Weiner, 2002). Furthermore, some researchers have also observed that emotion and cognition are inextricably interconnected, and both are needed to be examined simultaneously to comprehend the teaching and learning processes. Within this perspective, recently, there is an interestin examining students’ affects, and the ways in which these affects interact with cognitive, metacognitive andmotivational processes of students’ academic behavior (Dina &Efklides, 2009). Relationship of students’ perception of teacher effective and their experienced emotions Research also focuses on how students’ cognitive factors are related to their perceptions of instruction and experienced emotions in classroom. For example, previous studies showed that factors such as student’s goals, values, motives, prior knowledge and perceptions of self, contribute into eliciting an emotional response to a given classroom situation (Frenzel, Hall, &Pekrun, 2008; Perry et al., 2006; Stephanou et al., 2011). Also, although student emotions positively influence their academic outcomes and subjective wellbeing, with the exception to test anxiety (Zeidner, 2007) and attribution-based emotions in academic achievement (Stephanou, 2003), student emotions have not been substantially investigated. Similarly, although cognitive factors have been linked to academic performance, little research has explored their interactive role with emotions in real academic achievement situations (Stephanou, 2011). Overall, the interrelations of cognition, classroom experienced emotionsand teacher effectiveness have not been so thoroughly examined in the prior researches (Meyer, 2009; Stephanou&Kyridis, 2008).Therefore, the present research is proposed to address this gap in research towards understanding the teaching learning process. The present study derives its rationale from Pekrun’s (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions.According to Pekrun’s theory, the emotions experienced in academic settings can be classified into four major categories as positive activating emotions, positive deactivating emotions, negative activating emotions and negative deactivating emotions (Pekrun, 2009; Pekrun et al, 2002). Positive emotions are typically pleasant, sought after, or appreciated. Negative emotions are typically unpleasant, not actively pursued, and avoided. Activating emotions (e.g., hope, enjoyment of learning) are those that push the student to act or to be engaged in a task. Deactivating emotions (e.g., hopelessness, boredom), in contrast, influence the student to rest, disengaged or avoid a task. Copyright © 2017, Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies
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In addition, certain emotions are derived from the self or the task (e.g., hope, anxiety), from academic learning processes (e.g., excitement, joy, or boredom), and from the actual completion of the task (e.g., pride or shame). Finally, social emotions are also formulated from the interaction with the others (e.g., admiration, envy), or that directed at others (e.g., anger). Hence, it is obvious to think that the cognitive appraisal of students in the teaching-learning processmust be mediated by this complex structure of their emotions. Hence, teacher effective is not only so much a matter of teacher’s academic competence, but also a matter of teacher’s ability to experience and understand the students’ emotions. Objectives The study aimed to examine (a) relationship of students’ experienced emotions in the classroom with their perceived effectiveness of the teachers, (b) the extent to which experienced emotions in the classroom discriminate between effective and ineffective teachers and (c) share of the contribution of students’ emotion management in the classroom to the effectiveness of the teacher. Research Method Participants were 300 college students randomly selected from degree classes of three rural degree colleges in Odisha. The sample included both boys and girls from arts, science and commerce majors. The students’ age ranged between 17 to 20 years. Students’ Perceived teacher effectiveness was measured by the 25 -item Students’ Perceived Teacher Effectiveness Scale (Young & Shaw, 1999). The scale measures ten constructs of teacher effectiveness. Those are (i)How well students believe they have understood subject matter. (ii) How valuable and worthwhile they consider their learning experience in the subject. (iii) Teacher’s enthusiasm that increases student interest and attention.(iv) Verbal interaction in classrooms, questions and answers that facilitates the expression and sharing of ideas and knowledge from and between students. (v) Clear objectives and alignment between intended objectives and what is actually taught.(vi) Consideration that the prescribed readings are valuable and meaningful. (vii) Feedback and perceptions of fairness and relevance of the teacher. (viii) Verbal interaction in classrooms, questions and answers that facilitate the expression and sharing of ideas and knowledge from and between students. (ix) Social interaction to motivate, practice and gain ideas and receive helpful feedback. (x) Perceived teacher friendliness, approachability, accessibility and helpfulness.All items are rated from 1 (not at all descriptive) to 9 (very descriptive). The scale is a valid and reliable instrument in examining students’ perceptions of teacher effectiveness (Stephanou, 2006a, b; Stephanou & Copyright © 2017, Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies
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Kyridis, 2009). This study focuses on students’ rating of teacher total effectiveness, and not on specific components of effectiveness. Cronbach’s alphas were .79 for the perceived effective teachers group, and .80 for the perceived ineffective teachers group. The scale of Students’ Experienced Emotions in the classroom consisted of seventeen emotions, happiness, pleasure, satisfaction, cheerfulness, not irritated-irritated, pride, encouragement, not anxiety-anxiety, boredom-not boredom, interest, hope, confidence, competence, not angry-angry, excitement, enthusiasm, and calmness. The students were asked to indicate the extent to which they usually experienced each of the emotions in the classroom of the teacher by the extremely effective or ineffective teacher. The emotions had the form of opposite adjectives, with the positive one having the high score of 6 and the negative adjective having the low score of 0 (e.g., happy 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 unhappy). Research Design and Procedure Participants were asked to remember their primary school days and select two women teachers of their school time; a teacher who, in their judgment was extremely effective and a teacher, who, in their judgment was extremely ineffective. They were also requested to choose teachers whom they could recall in detail. Participants were provided with separate questionnaires for the most effective teacher and the most ineffective teacher. The wording of the questions of the scales for the two teachers was the same except for the effectiveness (effective / ineffective). The scale of ‘Experienced Emotions in the Classroom’ was administered on each of the participants. The students were informed about the aim of the research, and they were assured of anonymity and confidentiality. The participants completed the questionnaires in their colleges in front of the researcher. Results To examine the differences in the experienced emotions of students in the classes of perceived effective and perceived ineffective teachers, correlated ‘t’ were calculated for each of the 17 measures of experienced emotion (Table 1). It is observed from the results that perceived effective teachers have significantly better positive impact on each of the 17 measures of experienced emotions. These teachers have best impact on the students’ experience of pride (‘t’=59.38), cheerfulness (‘t’=58.05), and excitement (‘t’=65.82), happiness (‘t’=40.01), satisfaction (‘t’=42.06), pleasure (‘t’=47.75), Encouragement (‘t’=49.11), Hope (‘t’=39.49) and competence (‘t’=39.58) having 299 degrees of freedom associated with each of these ‘t’ values. These are all significant positive and constructive emotions of student life during school years. On the other hand, although Copyright © 2017, Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies
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significant, negatively experienced emotions such as anger- no anger (‘t’=30.12), boredomno boredom (‘t’=29.42), and anxiety- no anxiety (‘t’=26.78, df=299) are being less impacted by both perceived effective and ineffective teachers as observed in the comparison of ‘t’ values associated with same degrees of freedom. Thus, the results imply that students at primary school years are more responsive to positive than negative emotions and effective teachers have tremendous impact on their development of positive emotions. Arising from this finding, the data were subjected to discriminant analysis. Discriminant analysis Discriminant analysis was performed to find the set of emotions that best discriminated the two groups of teachers (Table 1). The students’ experienced emotions in the classes were the predictor variables, and the perceived effective/ineffective teacher was the grouping variable. It is observed that the emotion of pride has a maximum discriminating power of 0.87 with Cohen’s d 4.85 followed by cheerfulness 0.82, Cohen’s d 4.67. The other experienced emotions having high discriminating power are interest (d power 0.78, Cohen’s d-4.05), pleasure (d power 0.71, Cohen’s d-3.90), encouragement (d power 0.76, Cohen’s d4.01), excitement (d power 0.71, Cohen’s d-4.37), hope (d power 0.59, Cohen’s d-3.22), satisfaction (d power 0.65, Cohen’d-3.43), confidence (d power 0.62, Cohen’d-3.37) and enthusiasm (d power 0.63, Cohen’d-2.97). On the other hand, negative emotions are found be relatively low in discriminating power; e.g., anger- no anger (d power 0.51, Cohen’d-2.46), boredom- no boredom (d power 0.51, Cohen’d-2.40), irritated-not irritated (d power 0.49, Cohen’d-2.14), and anxiety-no anxiety (d power 0.48, Cohen’d-2.18). Regression analyses Arising from the findings results multiple regressions was carried out to explain how students experienced emotions significantly predicted the perceived effectiveness of the teachers. It is observed that 11 of the 17 experienced emotions predicted the effectiveness of the teachers. Those are happiness, satisfaction, pleasure, pride, encouragement, confidence, cheerfulness, interest, hope, competence and excitement. These emotions explained 39% of the variances in perceived effectiveness for theteachers, F (16, 283) = 27.36. On the other hand, 9 of the experienced emotions significantly predicted the ineffectiveness of the teachers. Those are happiness, confidence, anxiety-no anxiety, cheerfulness, interest, irritated-not irritated, pride, anger- no anger, and boredom- no boredom. These experienced emotions 33% of variances in the perceived ineffectiveness for the teachers F= (16,283) = 37.34. Copyright © 2017, Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies
Chhabilata Dei (Pg. 8491-8499) 8496 Table 1. Discriminant analysis for the students’ experienced emotions in classes taught by theperceived effective teachers and ineffective teachers Effective Ineffective Discrimin teachers teachers Sl. Cohen ‘t’Emotions ant No ’s d value Mea Power SD Mean SD n 1 Happiness 5.06 0.87 2.67 0.56 0.60 3.27 40.01 2 Satisfaction 5.22 1.13 1.94 0.74 0.65 3.43 42.06 3 Pleasure 4.96 0.76 2.13 0.69 0.71 3.90 47.75 4 Pride 5.19 0.84 1.71 0.57 0.87 4.85 59.38 5 Encouragement 4.83 0.95 1.29 0.81 0.76 4.01 49.11 6 Confidence 5.16 1.18 1.54 0.96 0.62 3.37 41.22 7 Anger- no anger 4.62 1.23 2.15 0.71 0.51 2.46 30.12 8 Boredomno 4.28 1.27 1.87 0.63 0.51 2.40 29.44 boredom 9 Cheerfulness 4.63 0.69 1.63 0.57 0.82 4.67 58.05 10 Interest 4.88 0.78 1.84 0.72 0.78 4.05 49.60 11 Irritatednot 5.07 1.32 1.51 0.91 0.58 3.14 38.46 irritated 12 Hope 5.32 0.82 1.95 1.23 0.59 3.22 39.49 13 Competence 5.12 0.65 2.22 1.09 0.59 3.23 39.58 14 Calmness 4.63 0.77 2.01 0.98 0.53 2.97 36.41 15 No anxiety3.96 1.20 1.85 0.65 0.48 2.18 26.78 anxiety 16 Enthusiasm 4.27 0.89 2.19 0.54 0.63 2.97 34.60 17 Excitement 4.96 0.73 1.64 0.48 0.71 5.37 65.82 Table 2. Multiple regression analyses with experienced emotions regressed on each of the two perceived effectiveness of teachers Perceived effective teachers Bet Bet Adjuste Predictors Predictors Predictors Beta R2 F a a d R2 Happiness Encourage .19 .22 Hope .19 ment F= Satisfactio Confidenc Competen 27.36 .23 .16 .15 n e ce (16, Pleasure Cheerfuln Exciteme 283), .19 .24 .18 ess nt p<.01 Pride .27 Interest .26 .39 .35 Perceived ineffective teachers Bet Bet Adjuste Predictors Predictors Predictors Beta R2 F a a d R2 Happiness Cheerfuln Pride .23 .20 .18 ess F=37.3 Confidenc Interest Anger- no 4 .19 .22 .27 e anger (16,28 IrritatedBoredom3), anxiety.26 not .27 no .25 .33 .31 P<.01 no anxiety irritated boredom
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Discussion The results of the study revealed that perceived effective teachers play a significant role in the experiencing of positive emotions by students in the classroom and school setting. On the other hand, perceived ineffective teachers do not contribute much to experiencing of positive emotionsof school students. However, ineffective teachers although contribute to the negative experiencing emotions, students are found to be less vulnerable to negative emotions. In other words, an effective teacher can do more good to a student than an effective teacher can harm. The results of discriminant analysis revealed that experiencing interest, pleasure, encouragement, excitement, hope, satisfaction, confidence and enthusiasm have high discriminating power between perceived effective and ineffective teachers. As these are all positive and constructive emotions of student life, a perceived effective teacher is a definite necessity in any student’s life. In the regression analyses, it is observed that 11 of the 17 experienced emotions explained 39% of the variances of effective teachership. Hence, emotion management of students is one of the primary responsibilities of effective teachers. This finding is also cross checked when it is found that five of those experienced emotions along with other four negative emotions explained 31% of variances of ineffective teachership. In summary, it may be said that addressing the emotional needs and promoting positive emotions are keys to effective teachership. References Dina, F., &Efklides, A. (2009). Metacognitive experiences as the link between situational characteristics, motivation, and affect in self-regulated learning. In M. Wosnitza, S. A. Karabenick, A. Efklides, & P. Nenniger (Eds.),Contemporary motivation research: From global to local perspectives (pp. 117-146). Cambridge: Hogrefe& Huber. Frenzel, A. C., Hall, T., O., Pekrun, R., & Sutton, R. (2008). Emotional transmission in the classroom: Exploring the relationship between teacher and student enjoyment. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 705-716. Frenzel, A. C., Pekrun, R., & Goetz, T. (2007). Perceived learning environments and students' emotional experiences: A multilevel analysis of mathematics classrooms. Learning and Instruction, 17, 478-493. Frijda, N. H. (2009). Emotion experience and its varieties.Emotion Review, 1, 261-271. Meyer, D. K. (2009).Entering the Emotional Practices of Teaching. In P. A. Schutz& M. Zembylas (Eds.), Advances in Teacher Emotion Research (pp., 73-91). NY: Springer. Pekrun, R. (2006). The control-value theory of achievement emotions: Assumptions, corollaries, and implications for educational research and practice. Educational Psychology Review, 18, 315-341. Pekrun, R. (2009). Emotions at school.In K. R. Wentzel& A. Wigfield (Eds.), Handbook of motivation in school (pp. 575 - 605). New York: Routledge Taylor. Copyright Š 2017, Scholarly Research Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies
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