Teacher's Emotional Display Affects Students' Perceptions of Teacher's Competence, Feelings, and Productivity in Online Small-Group Discussions.

Xuejiao Cheng,Guanghua Bao,Jianzhong Hong,Zhiqiang Liu,Han Xie

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.795708

Xuejiao Cheng, Guanghua Bao + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.795708

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Abstract

Teacher's emotions have been shown to be highly important in the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning. There is a recognized need to examine the essential role of teacher's emotions in students' academic achievement. However, the influence of teacher's displays of emotions on students' outcomes in small-group interaction activities, especially in the online environment, has received little attention in prior research. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between teacher's different emotional displays and students' perceptions of the teacher's competence, as well as students' collaborative feelings and productivity in online small-group discussions. Using a three-level between-subjects design, 74 participants were randomly divided into four-member groups comprising a teacher and three other participants. All the groups were asked to discuss an open-ended realistic problem using online software, during which the teacher's display of emotions varied (positive vs. negative vs. neutral). The participants' self-reported questionnaire data (perception of the teacher's competence, students' feeling of pleasure, collaborative satisfaction, and willingness to continue collaborating) and productivity (number of effective ideas expressed within a given time) were measured to compare the participants who were exposed to different emotional displays. As expected, the results showed that the participants who received the teacher's positive emotional display reported that they experienced higher levels of pleasure during the task. However, in contrast to our expectations, those under the negative emotional display condition showed a significantly higher level of productivity in the group task. In addition, compared to emotional display, the participants' perceptions of the teacher's competence were rated significantly higher under the neutral condition, and they reported higher levels of collaborative satisfaction and greater willingness to continue collaborating with their group. The findings have the potential benefit of informing educational practice on whether teachers should display their emotions in a small-group discussion or how they should display emotions following adjustment for the relative aim of the teaching activities.

Highlights

Collaborative learning can occur in a wide variety of forms, and small-group learning has received researchers’ constant attention (Micari and Pazos, 2014; Pai et al, 2015)
Linear regressions were conducted to examine the relationship between the judgments toward the teacher, students’ collaborative perceptions, and behavioral productivity to further understand how the differences in the teacher’s display of emotions influenced group members in the online small-group discussions
The results showed that those under the negative emotional display condition showed significantly higher levels of behavioral productivity during the group task followed by students under the positive emotional display condition, and those under the neutral emotional display condition

Summary

Introduction

Collaborative learning can occur in a wide variety of forms, and small-group learning has received researchers’ constant attention (Micari and Pazos, 2014; Pai et al, 2015). Productive behavior among students working does not come which limits the desired effects of small-group learning in educational practice (Slavin, 2014; Wang et al, 2017). Some researchers consider that inadequate attention is placed on the emotional aspects of small-group learning, which is a pitfall for interaction in such settings, especially in the case where collaborative learning is adjusted from face-to-face education to web-based blended learning through various digital media and collaborative communication tools (Kreijns et al, 2003; Jeong and HmeloSilver, 2016; Wang et al, 2017). Our study focused on the emotions of teachers and students in the context of communication in online smallgroup learning, where teacher’s emotions are an important factor affecting various aspects of the teaching–learning practice (Meyer and Turner, 2006; Hagenauer et al, 2016; Hansen and Mendzheritskaya, 2017)

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