How (de)motivating teaching styles shape message framing outcomes on students’ self-efficacy, emotions, and grades

Abstract

In this study, a mixed method and prospective design was followed to achieve two objectives: code student responses to an open-ended question about their teachers’ teaching and examine how this classification relates with the associations among students’ self-reports on teachers’ message framing (gains or losses), their self-efficacy, academic achievement emotions, and teacher reported grades. 1107 Spanish students in grades 9 to 12 participated in the study. GPT-4 was used to code the open-ended question responses on teachers’ teaching style. Structural equation modeling (SEM) tested the hypothesized relations among variables accounting for the teaching styles. Results from the SEM revealed that gain-framed messages related positively with student outcomes, as opposed to loss-framed messages, but only when teachers displayed a motivating teaching style. For demotivating teachers, messages did not relate with students’ outcomes except for gain-framed messages and student adaptive emotions. Directions for future research and implications for educational practice are discussed.