Need satisfied teachers adopt a motivating style: The mediation of teacher enthusiasm

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2022.102203Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Teacher need satisfaction relates to the adoption of a motivating teaching style.

  • Experienced enthusiasm mediates the relation need satisfaction-motivating style.

  • Teacher need frustration relates to the adoption of a (de)motivating style.

  • Experienced enthusiasm mediates the relation need frustration-chaotic style.

Abstract

Teachers' basic psychological need satisfaction or frustration are associated with their tendency to adopt a motivating or demotivating teaching style. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. This study examined the role played by teachers' experienced and displayed enthusiasm. Three hundred forty-one high school teachers filled in self-report questionnaires to assess basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration, experienced and displayed enthusiasm, and adoption of (de)motivating teaching styles. The results showed that experienced but not displayed enthusiasm mediated the relationship between teachers' need satisfaction and their tendency to adopt autonomy-supportive and structuring styles, and between teachers' need frustration and their tendency to adopt a chaotic style. The discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications.

Introduction

Teachers play a central role in motivating students by fostering self-efficacy (Chong et al., 2018), conveying values (e.g., Gaspard et al., 2015), fostering achievement emotions (e.g., Pekrun, 2006), transmitting adaptive beliefs (e.g., Sun, 2018), being enthusiastic (e.g., Keller et al., 2016; Lazarides et al., 2018), and adopting a motivating style (e.g., Cheon et al., 2020).

Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT: Ryan & Deci, 2000; Ryan & Deci, 2017), this study aimed to achieve a better understanding of the factors prompting teachers to adopt a motivating style that satisfies their students' needs, rather than a demotivating style that frustrates them (Vansteenkiste et al., 2020). Specifically, the two motivating autonomy-supportive and structuring styles and the two demotivating controlling and chaotic styles were considered (Aelterman et al., 2019; Bartholomew et al., 2011; Vermote et al., 2020) to shed light on the mechanisms that affect teachers' adoption of a motivating style. The findings can contribute to designing interventions to enable teachers to become more supportive of their students.

Research has shown that teachers' need satisfaction leads to the adoption of a motivating style, whereas need frustration favors the adoption of a demotivating one (e.g., Aelterman et al., 2019), confirming the twofold conceptualization of a bright (motivating) and a dark (demotivating) paths of relations (Bartholomew et al., 2011; Jang et al., 2016). Other studies have examined why satisfied teachers are more supportive, whereas unsatisfied teachers tend to be more controlling or chaotic. The findings pointed to teachers' motivation and beliefs (Katz & Shahar, 2015), self-compassion (Moè & Katz, 2020), and emotion regulation (Moè & Katz, 2021) as possible mechanisms. However, these components do not fully account for the qualities nurtured by need satisfaction that give the teachers the energy to be more supportive. Thus, the current study considered the role played by teacher enthusiasm, which has yet to be investigated in this context.

Aelterman et al. (2019) and Vermote et al. (2020) defined four teaching styles characterized by different levels of support vs. control and structure vs. chaos that teachers provide to their students. The ‘autonomy-supportive’ and ‘structuring’ styles are considered motivating, whereas the ‘controlling’ and ‘chaotic’ styles are considered demotivating.

Autonomy-supportive teachers display patience and accept expressions of affect, identify students' interests, and allow choice (e.g., Aelterman et al., 2019; Assor et al., 2002; Jang et al., 2016; Patall et al., 2010). Structuring teachers display guidance, provide help, and organize lessons to enable students to feel more competent (e.g., Jang et al., 2010; Vansteenkiste et al., 2012). Controlling teachers are demanding, put pressure on students, show poor understanding of students' perspectives and feelings, and may punish, or make students feel guilty or ashamed (e.g., Bartholomew et al., 2011; Soenens et al., 2012). Chaotic teachers are inconsistent in their behavior and unclear in their expectations. Recent research has pointed to the positive consequences of teacher adoption of autonomy-supportive and structuring styles and the negative consequences of controlling and chaotic styles on students' motivation and engagement (e.g., Collie et al., 2019; Garn et al., 2019).

According to SDT, people experience wellbeing, motivation, and full functioning when they perceive their basic psychological needs for competence (feeling able to do what is required), autonomy (having the possibility to choose and do meaningful things), and relatedness (feeling supported and respected) are satisfied. A bulk of research has shown that teacher autonomy-support favors a range of student outcomes (e.g., Haerens et al., 2015; Reeve, 2016; Soenens et al., 2012; for a review see Ryan & Deci, 2020).

At the same time, the importance of “supporting the supporters” (Katz, Kaplan, & Buzukashvily, 2011) has been emphasized. To be able to support student needs, teachers also need to feel that their own needs are met (Roth et al., 2007). This experience of need satisfaction acts as an internal resource for motivation and energy (Chen et al., 2015) that enhances teachers' ability to be supportive (Aelterman et al., 2019; Moè & Katz, 2020; Moè & Katz, 2021; Van den Berghe et al., 2014).

While teacher need satisfaction and frustration are related to their motivating style (e.g., Aelterman et al., 2019), little is known about the mechanisms shaping these relations. Previous research has found that a range of factors are related to teacher perceived need satisfaction/frustration. For example, self-compassion/derogation was shown to shape the level of need satisfaction/frustration (Moè & Katz, 2020). Burnout and emotional cognitive reappraisal (Moè & Katz, 2020; Moè & Katz, 2021) were found to mediate, whereas suppression was found to moderate. Hence, this study explored the role played by teacher enthusiasm as a mediating factor.

Teacher enthusiasm has been conceptualized as (a) an enthusiastic behavioral display, characterized by verbal and nonverbal bodily and facial expressions of high energy and involvement (e.g., Collins, 1978: displayed enthusiasm), or (b) self-reported positive affect and felt enthusiasm for teaching or the subject taught (Keller et al., 2016; Kunter et al., 2008; Kunter et al., 2011: experienced enthusiasm). In most cases these two kinds of enthusiasm converge, in that teachers feel enthusiastic and their behavior is considered to express ‘authentic enthusiasm’ (Keller et al., 2014, Keller et al., 2018; Taxer & Frenzel, 2018). At times however, teachers may produce superficial displays of enthusiasm which they do not actually feel (externalized or pretended enthusiasm). Alternatively, they may feel enthusiastic but not show it (internalized enthusiasm). For instance, in a study of teacher lesson diaries and student evaluations, Keller et al. (2018) found that teachers expressed authentic enthusiasm 64 % of the time, faked enthusiasm 22 % of the time, and felt unexpressed enthusiasm 10 % of the time. Similar percentages were found by Taxer and Frenzel (2018): 69 % of the time teachers were authentically enthusiastic.

These authentic expressions of enthusiasm have been shown to lead to increased enjoyment, and decreased boredom in students (Keller et al., 2018) as well as to increased teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction and decreased teacher anger and anxiety (Taxer & Frenzel, 2018).

By contrast, faking enthusiasm can result in teacher burnout (Taxer & Frenzel, 2018) and negatively affect student achievement (Keller et al., 2018) and teacher wellbeing (Burić, 2019). Studies examining the specific and shared effects of experienced and displayed enthusiasm have found that experienced enthusiasm is much more beneficial than displayed enthusiasm and was associated with students' intrinsic motivation (e.g., Lazarides et al., 2018), positive affect (Frenzel et al., 2009; Frenzel et al., 2018), and learning (Kunter et al., 2013; Moè, Frenzel, Au, & Taxer, 2021).

In this study, we considered both experienced and displayed enthusiasm, by hypothesizing that experienced enthusiasm plays a major role.

Previous research has examined a range of factors that make teachers feel enthusiastic. These include beliefs as to what characterizes an effective teacher (Sutton, 2004), teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction (Burić & Moè, 2020; Kunter et al., 2008, Kunter et al., 2011, Kunter et al., 2013), positive affect (e.g., Frenzel et al., 2009), emotional labor (e.g., Burić, 2019), and interacting with motivated students (e.g., Frenzel et al., 2018).

However, need satisfaction has been neglected as a factor, nevertheless being considered as an “energizer” that leads to an overall experience of positive affect (e.g., Stanley et al., 2021) and increased vitality (Chen et al., 2015; Vansteenkiste et al., 2020), which are likely to favor teacher experienced enthusiasm (Burić & Moè, 2020). Conversely, perceived frustration of these three needs, which implies mostly negative rather than positive affect, reduces vitality levels and emotional resources (Moller et al., 2006), and can prompt teachers to be less enthusiastic. To the best of our knowledge, only Aldrup et al. (2017) have examined teacher perceived need satisfaction as a factor leading to increased enthusiasm. They conducted a diary study with novice teachers by asking them to record the extent to which they perceived their needs to have been satisfied, and their levels of enthusiasm and emotional exhaustion over a period of 10 working days. The results showed that perceived satisfaction of the needs for competence and relatedness led to increased enthusiasm and decreased emotional exhaustion over time. However, they did not examine need frustration.

Previous research found that enthusiasm for teaching leads to increased instructional quality (e.g., Cui et al., 2017; Frommelt et al., 2021; Gaspard & Lauermann, 2021; Kunter et al., 2008). Kunter et al. (2008) found that both teachers and students perceive an enthusiastic teacher as more cognitively challenging, monitoring and supportive. Cui et al. (2017) found that student-rated teacher enthusiasm was associated with perceived autonomy support and led to decreased student boredom. In a longitudinal study, Frommelt et al. (2021) found that perceived teacher enthusiasm predicted subsequent student perception of autonomy, competence and social relatedness which in turn led to increased student motivation, suggesting that teachers were successful in motivating (e.g., they adopted a motivating style). Gaspard and Lauermann (2021) reported strong and consistent relationships across five lessons between teacher enthusiasm and student engagement, suggesting that a motivational climate had been established. Moreover, teacher enthusiasm has been shown to increase a variety of student factors, which suggests that it associated with a stimulating and supportive style that favor student interest (Keller et al., 2014), vitality (Patrick et al., 2000b), recall, and absorption (Moè, 2016), achievement emotions (Taxer & Frenzel, 2018), student positive affect and intrinsic motivation (Burić, 2019; Lazarides et al., 2018; Zhang, 2014), as well as teacher wellbeing (Keller et al., 2018) and creativity (Huang et al., 2021). Finally, research within the framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) has extensively demonstrated that the adoption of a supportive style requires emotional resources (e.g., Reeve, 2009, Reeve, 2016) and that emotionally exhausted teachers tend to adopt the controlling or chaotic modalities (e.g., Roth et al., 2007). In particular, the adoption of emotional reappraisal modalities instead of suppression has been shown to play a central role. Need satisfaction favors reappraisal leading to adopt a more motivating style. By contrast, need frustration leads to preferring less effective suppressive emotion regulation strategies, thus favoring the adoption of chaotic or controlling demotivating modalities.

However, none of these studies considered teacher need satisfaction/frustration, teacher enthusiasm, and the adoption of motivating or demotivating styles altogether.

Based on this literature, we predicted that the more teachers perceive their needs to be satisfied; i.e., the more they feel supported, capable and autonomous, the higher their enthusiasm. By contrast, the more they perceive need frustration; i.e., the sense of not to be capable enough, or supported and confronted with a narrow set of possibilities to choose from, the lower their positive affect and vitality and hence enthusiasm.

In turn, enthusiasm, which is an emotional resource (Keller et al., 2016) and which is naturally characterized by expressions of vitality (Collins, 1978; Patrick et al., 2020a) may enable teachers to have the energy to adopt a supportive teaching style.

Further, experienced enthusiasm, more than simply displayed enthusiasm, is likely to play a major role, because it refers to an emotional state that should support the adoption of a motivating style, whereas displayed enthusiasm consists in a set of behaviors that does not reflect genuine enthusiasm.

Overall, we argued that the more teachers feel connected, capable and able to choose, the more they will experience positive affect, including enthusiasm. We reasoned that this positive affect should instill the vitality/energy needed to be supportive with students through the adoption of a motivating style. Conversely, we reasoned that when teachers experience a sense of detachment, hostility or conflict, and sense that they cannot choose, be autonomous and/or perceive lack of competence in facing the challenges of teaching, they will have fewer resources to draw on, express lower levels of positive affect (and enthusiasm) and higher negative affect. As a result, they will not have the energy or the vitality to adopt a motivating style and instead may prefer a controlling or chaotic one.

This study assessed the mediating role of teacher displayed and experienced enthusiasm in the association between need satisfaction/frustration and the adoption of (de)motivating styles. We posited that the more teachers report their needs to be satisfied, the more they will experience and display enthusiasm and in turn, adopt a motivating style. By contrast, the more teachers perceive their needs to be frustrated, the less they will experience and display enthusiasm, and may thus adopt more a controlling or a chaotic style. In assessing these relationships, we controlled for social desirability, which has been shown to be associated with teachers' tendency to report the adoption of a (de)motivating style (e.g., Aelterman et al., 2019).

The following hypotheses were formulated:

H1

Need satisfaction will be positively associated with the adoption of autonomy-supportive and structuring styles, whereas need frustration will be associated with controlling and chaotic styles.

H2

Teacher enthusiasm will be positively associated with need satisfaction, and autonomy-supportive and structuring styles, and negatively with need frustration, and controlling and chaotic styles.

H3

Experienced enthusiasm, to a greater extent than displayed enthusiasm, will mediate the association between teachers' need satisfaction and their tendency to use autonomy-supportive and structuring styles and between teachers' need frustration and their tendency to use controlling and chaotic styles.

Section snippets

Participants

A convenience sample of 341 Italian high school teachers took part in this study (aged M = 49.60, SD = 10.14, 108–32 % males). They taught Italian, history or geography (33 %), mathematics or sciences (18 %), second language (13 %), technical subjects (14 %), music (8 %), physical education (4 %), and religion (2 %). Eight percent were assistant teachers.

Procedure

The local Ethics Committee approved this study (Protocol number 3711). A large number of high school teachers were contacted by e-mail and

Descriptive statistics and correlations

Table 1 reports the mean values, standard deviations, and intercorrelations among variables. We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the convergence of the items assessing experienced and displayed enthusiasm into different factors. The measurement model was composed of 5 manifested items pertaining to displayed teacher enthusiasm and 4 manifested items pertaining to experienced teacher enthusiasm. The results indicated an adequate fit to the data, χ2(26) = 110.86, p < .001,

Discussion

This study explored the role played by teacher need satisfaction and enthusiasm in favoring the adoption of a motivating style characterized by autonomy support and the provision of a structure, and teacher need frustration in reducing enthusiasm and favoring the adoption of a demotivating style. The results confirmed that (a) need satisfaction related to the adoption of the autonomy-supportive and structuring styles, whereas need frustration was associated with both the chaotic and the

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Drs. Sara Mai, Lorenzo Manconi, Gabriele Spinardi, Miriam Stefano for their help with data collection.

The present work was carried out within the scope of the research program Dipartimenti di Eccellenza (art.1, commi 314-337 legge 232/2016), which was supported by a grant from MIUR to the Department of General Psychology, University of Padua.

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