Teachers’ engaging messages and the relationship with students’ performance and teachers’ enthusiasm

Abstract

The current study examined the relation of students’ performance and teachers’ enthusiasm with teachers’ use of engaging messages in class. These messages can focus on the benefits or disadvantages of engaging in a school task, and appeal to controlled (i.e., extrinsic, or introjected) or autonomous (i.e., identified, or intrinsic) incentives to engage students. Engaging messages were gathered through audio-recorded lessons of 39 teachers in 59 student groups during the second term of the academic year. Results showed that both students’ performance and teachers’ enthusiasm are related to teacher's use of engaging messages. The better the students’ performance, and the higher the teachers’ enthusiasm, the larger the number of messages used. Moreover, the better the students’ performance, the greater the likelihood of using messages that appeal to extrinsic incentives. By assessing engaging messages through objective observations, we discovered relationships that can help us better understand teachers’ use of engaging message.