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. Educational relavance statementThese findings bridge critical gaps in the field, incorporating a self-determination theory lens into a qualitative design, and concurrently addressing message framing and its interaction with teaching style on student outcomes. The study’s exploration of a wide range of emotions and its direct examination of teaching’s predictive value on student emotions further enrich the existing scholarship. In practical terms, the results provide valuable insights for educators, highlighting that cultivating a motivating teaching style and employing gain-framed messages can positively influence students’ emotions, self-efficacy beliefs, and grades. This research not only contributes to theoretical advancements in educational psychology but also offers a tangible and straightforward resource for teachers to enhance their instructional practices and positively relation with student outcomes. The major findings discussed above underscore the significance of these insights in informing both educational theory and classroom practices. For instance, the evidence gathered could be useful to develop interventions targeting teaching practices or those targeting students’ behavioural change regarding following teachers’ advice. Telling a teacher how to frame their messages is simple, does not require much time, expertise, or budget. Thus, it denotes the best scenario to conduct school-based interventions.