Abstract

It is plausible to assume that teachers need motivation, emotions, and self-regulation to teach and promote students’ learning. However, as documented in this special issue, extant research is inconsistent and has documented weak effects of these teacher variables at best. I discuss possible reasons for this paradoxical failure to more fully document the importance of motivation, emotion, and self-regulation. Specifically, in addition to conceptual problems, research has focused too much on using between-person designs, variables with truncated distributions and reduced variance, and samples from single Western countries. To better understand the effects of teacher variables on student outcomes, we need to (1) develop and test more fine-grained theoretical models explaining the mechanisms mediating these effects, (2) complement between-teacher research by within-teacher studies, and (3) examine teacher-student processes across cultural and historical contexts. Collaboration with other disciplines may be needed, including economics, sociology, political science, computer science, and history.

摘要

可以假设教师需要动机、情感和自我调节来教授和促进学生的学习。然而，正如本期特刊中所记录的，现存的研究并不一致，并且最多只记录了这些教师变量的微弱影响。我讨论了这种自相矛盾的失败的可能原因，以更全面地记录动机、情绪和自我调节的重要性。具体来说，除了概念问题之外，研究过于关注使用人与人之间的设计、截断分布和减少方差的变量以及来自单一西方国家的样本。为了更好地理解教师变量对学生成绩的影响，我们需要 (1) 开发和测试更细粒度的理论模型，解释调节这些影响的机制，(2) 通过教师内部研究补充教师间研究，以及 (3) 跨文化和历史背景检查师生过程。可能需要与其他学科合作，包括经济学、社会学、政治学、计算机科学和历史学。