Dynamics of need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior: the bidirectional relationship with student engagement and disengagement in the beginning of a lesson

Background: According to the classroom ecology paradigm, teachers and students interpret, predict, and respond to each other repeatedly in a reciprocal way. Such a reciprocal relationship is reflected in bidirectional interactions between a teacher's behavior and student (dis)engagement, an issue that has been confirmed in longitudinal studies including measures at different moments in a school year.

Aims: Starting from the perspective of self-determination theory, the aim of the present study was to investigate bidirectional relationships between student (dis)engagement and need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior during the first 15?min of a lesson.

Sample &; method: The first three 5-minute intervals of 100 videotaped physical education lessons taught by 100 different teachers (51.9% male, M age?=?37.5?±?10.9 years) were observed and coded for need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior, student engagement, and student disengagement. Correlations were calculated to explore relationships between student (dis)engagement and teaching behavior over the first 15?minutes of a PE lesson. Next, path analyses were conducted to analyze 5-to-5?minute interactions between teaching behavior and student (dis)engagement.

Results: Student engagement correlated positively and disengagement correlated negatively with need support, while engagement correlated negatively and disengagement correlated positively with need-thwarting over the first 15?minutes of the lesson. There were few significant relationships between student engagement and teachers’ behavior across and between each of the three 5-minute intervals. Only when teachers provided more need support during the first 5?minutes of the lesson, students were more engaged in the third 5?minutes of the lesson. When students were more disengaged during the first 5?minutes of the lesson, teachers displayed less need support in the following 10?minutes of the lesson. In contrast, student disengagement in the second 5?minutes of the lesson related to more need support in the next 5?minutes. Most of the within-interval relationships between student engagement and teachers’ behaviors were inconsistent, but we did find positive relationships between student disengagement and need-thwarting teaching behaviors in the first and third interval, suggesting a rather direct and momentary within 5-minute intervals interaction between teachers and students.

Conclusions: Findings of the present observational study suggest that, although overall relationships between student (dis)engagement and teachers’ behavior were in the expected directions, the picture might become more complicated when relationships are investigated according to the timing of the lesson, an issue that has remained uncovered in self-reported studies. While student disengagement was related to less need support and more need-thwarting teaching behaviors, more detailed analyses showed that it was particularly student disengagement in the beginning of a lesson that elicited less positive teaching behaviors. When students display disengagement further along in the first 15?minutes of the lesson, teachers seemed to respond in a more need-supportive way to student disengagement. Such findings provide interesting insights to build interventions for teachers around certain critical moments during the lesson, for example when dealing with student disengagement at a specific moment in the lesson.     

Spontaneity and planning in arts attendance: insights from qualitative interviews and the Audience Finder database

ABSTRACT

Arts managers frequently use customer relationship management systems to identify early and late ticket bookers, but to date there has been no comparable investigation of spontaneity and planning through qualitative academic audience research. This paper combines two radically different datasets to draw new insights into booking patterns of audiences for contemporary arts events. Quantitative data from Audience Finder has been analysed to look for trends in early and late booking amongst audiences for contemporary art forms. Qualitative data has been drawn from the Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts study, which used in-depth individual interviews to investigate the contemporary arts attendance of audience members in four UK cities. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was then used to draw out insights about where the purchasing point sits within the longer decision to attend. Following a review of marketing and audience research literature on the decision to attend, we present the findings from each of these analyses, looking at moments where they confirm, supplement, contradict, or say something completely outside the remit of the other dataset. We show how the timescale of the decision to attend is influenced by (1) art form conventions and price, (2) geographical region and availability of the arts, (3) attending arts events with companions, and (4) personal preference for planning or spontaneously choosing activities. We end by suggesting a new three-part model for understanding booking patterns, and considering how these insights might be acted upon by arts organisations.     

Integrating Reform‐Oriented Math Instruction in Special Education Settings

This mixed‐methods study assessed the effects of Enhanced Anchored Instruction (EAI) on the math performance of adolescents with learning disabilities in math (MLD). A quasi‐experimental pretest–posttest control group design with switching replications was used to measure students' computation and problem‐solving skills on EAI compared to control conditions. Scores on the curriculum‐aligned and standardized measures showed improved problem‐solving skills but results were mixed for computation. To augment the numerical data, a qualitative inquiry captured day‐to‐day classroom activities. The findings showed that problem‐based curricula such as EAI have the potential for helping students with MLD develop deeper understandings of math concepts but that considerable effort is required to structure and teach these concepts in ways students with MLD understand.     

Management of Innovations from a Cultural-Individual Perspective

The history of education and schooling is characterised by not only the attainment of results but also ongoing critique of the existing situation in education and schooling. Developers and researchers are, as a result, constantly seeking new strategies and methods for the improved implementation of innovations in actual educational practice. The central question is which factors and which conditions facilitate the effects of innovations. In an attempt to answer this question, many educators will not so much be concerned with objective structural factors such as available funds, classmates, et cetera. They will be concerned, rather, with the questions of which socially constructed realities and which particular forms of involvement on the part of teachers, school administrators, and counsellors facilitate successful innovation. In our search for an answer to these questions, moreover, we will be guided by a cultural-individual perspective on innovation. Traditional innovative strategies – and, in particular, large scale strategies – seem not always suitable to deal with today's educational problems. Alternative scenario's for the management of innovations are considered.