During the 1970s,teacher enthusiasm was equated with displayed enthusiasm includingnonverbal expressiveness and instructional behavior.Collins(1978)proposed the idea ofenthusiasm as a culmination of expressive nonverbal behaviors such as eye contact,vocalanimation,body movements.Influenced by Collins,teacher enthusiasm was alsoconceptualized as nonverbal expressiveness(Murray,1983;Patrick et al.,2000).However,in Rosenshine’s(1970)conceptualization,some other relevant teacher behaviors such as verbalinteraction between students and teacher,the types of questions,regular praise andencouragement should also be considered not only including nonverbal expressiveness.Later,the above uni-behavioral understanding of teacher enthusiasm has been challenged. Previous research has highlighted teacher’s overt teaching behaviors and rarely discussed factors that might enable them to exhibit these motivating and effective teaching behaviors.
2.2 Learning Engagement
This section will review the concept of learning engagement.It will start with considering the review of how learning engagement has been variously defined in the setting of education,following by its measurement instruments.Then,previous studies of both contextual and individual factors contributing to learning engagement in educational background will be summarized in details.
2.2.1 Conceptualizations and Measurement of Learning Engagement
Generally speaking,learning engagement is also known as student engagement oracademic engagement(Zhang,2012).Learning engagement research began in the USAresearch in the 1930s with the study of time on task which was put forward by Tyler.It isbelieved that the longer one engages in relevant activities,the more content they learn.Sincethen,a series of studies on learning engagement were conducted abroad.Later,Pace(1982)inherited and developed Tyler’s viewpoint,believing that we should not only pay attention tothe length of time students engage in learning,but also the quality of practical engagement.Based on years of research on students,Martin(1984)believed that learning engagementreferred to the total amount of physical and psychological energy that students put into thelearning process.
Chapter Three Research Design...........................41
3.1 Research Questions................................41
3.2 Research Participants...................................41
Chapter Four Results and Discussion.......................63
4.1 Descriptive Statistics of Students’Perceived Teacher Enthusisam and LearningEngagement in College English Classrooms..........................63
4.2 The Relationship between Students’Perceievd Teacher Enthusiasm and LearningEngagement...........................66
Chapter Five Conclusion........................99
5.1 Major Findings.....................................99
5.2 Implications....................................103
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Descriptive Statistics of Students’Perceived Teacher Enthusiasmand Learning Engagement in College English Classrooms
Descriptive statistical analysis of the collected sample data can infer and summarize thecharacteristics of variables based on the information reflected in the data.Therefore,thisstudy will conduct descriptive statistics first on the results of two scales:Perceived TeacherEnthusiasm Scale(PTES)and Learning Engagement Scale(LES)in college Englishclassrooms.Descriptive Statistical Analysis of the Regulatory Focus Scale and classificationsof different regulatory focus will be combined to discuss in the next section.
Firstly,SPSS 26.0 was used to calculate the mean and standard deviation of the surveyedstudents in their perceptions of teacher enthusiasm(Table 4.1).By analyzing these two valuesfrom the results,it can help
