How Teachers Establish Psychological Environments during the First Days of School: Associations with Avoidance in Mathematics

Abstract

Observations of the first days of school in eight sixth-grade classrooms identified three different classroom environments. In supportive environments teachers expressed enthusiasm for learning, were respectful, used humor, and voiced expectations that all students would learn. In ambiguous environments teachers were inconsistent in their support and focus on learning and exercised contradictory forms of management. In nonsupportive environments teachers emphasized extrinsic reasons for learning, forewarned that learning would be difficult and that students might cheat or misbehave, and exercised authoritarian control. Teachers’ patterns of motivational and organizational discourse during math classes near the end of the year were consistent with the messages they expressed at the beginning of the year. When student reports of avoidance behaviors in math from fall and spring were compared with the qualitative analyses of these environments, students in supportive classrooms reported engaging in significantly less avoidance behavior than students in ambiguous or nonsupportive environments.

The impact of physics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and motivation on students’ achievement and interest

“…However, the results also reveal that students' interest at T2 is predicted by the teacher or more specifically the teachers' motivation and enthusiastic teaching behaviors (see between-part of the model in Figure 4). This is in line with previous findings evidencing that teachers and the way they devise instruction and learning environments have a substantial impact upon their students' emerging interest (e.g., Frenzel et al, 2010;Keller et al, 2014;Kunter, Baumert, & K€ oller, 2007;Patrick, Turner, Meyer, & Midgley, 2003). Teachers often seem to believe that "a student either does or does not have interest" (Lipstein & Renninger, 2007, p. 116), coming to the conclusion that student interest is not malleable and that they themselves as teachers have no impact on it.…”

Exploring the affective, motivational and cognitive effects of pedagogical agent enthusiasm in a multimedia learning environment

“…In the context of instructional style in traditional classrooms, enthusiasm relates to the teaching delivery that conveys the significance and intrinsic value of learning or of the subject's content to learners [22,23]. An instructor may convey enthusiasm through verbal cues, such as remarking on the value of the learning material or expressing instructor's own interest in the matter [23].…”

“…An instructor may convey enthusiasm through verbal cues, such as remarking on the value of the learning material or expressing instructor's own interest in the matter [23]. More importantly however, enthusiasm is also conveyed through enthusiastic nonverbal cues such as highly animated gestures, dynamic and energetic vocal tones and smiling facial expressions [20,24].…”

Motivação e Autorregulação da Motivação no Contexto Educativo

“…Em contraposição, têm sido arroladas como âncoras de ações docentes promotoras da meta domínio a apresentação das tarefas como desafiadoras, revestidas de valor e promotoras de interesse, o reconhecimento do esforço como causa de sucesso e a utilização de padrões autorreferenciados nas avaliações (para mais detalhes, ver, por ex., Ames, 1992;Guimarães, 2009;Schunk et al, 2014). Além desse conjunto, contribuirão para a estrutura da meta domínio, em classe, variáveis como apoio dos professores, respeito, além de promoção de interações positivas entre os próprios alunos (Patrick, Turner, Meyer, & Midgley, 2003).…”