Abstract
Enjoyment for teaching represents one of the most frequently reported teaching emotions and positively affects student outcomes. Therefore, researchers and teacher educators need to understand its nature and underlying appraisal processes to prepare motivated teachers as part of initial teacher education. Using cross-sectional questionnaire data from 189 German biology preservice teachers (73.5% female, meanage = 23.45 years, SDage = 3.71 years), we empirically tested the topic-specific structure and antecedents of participants’ anticipated enjoyment for teaching. We adapted the established Teacher Emotion Scale to measure preservice teachers’ trait-based enjoyment for teaching by reframing the items with the environmental socioscientific issues of the return of wild wolves and climate change and the health socioscientific issue of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the best fit of a topic-specific model. We also found different correlations for the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about the issues, but no significant differences in means. Concerning further topic-specific antecedents, the environmentally oriented basic value of universalism predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about the return of wolves, and the socially oriented universal value of benevolence predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Both values inconsistently predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about climate change. While this is in line with the complex nature of this socioscientific issue, psychological distance was a predictor for the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about every topic. While these effects remained stable when controlling for demographic variables, male participants showed a higher anticipated enjoyment for teaching about wolves and about climate change, and female preservice teachers for teaching about preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Further studies are needed to investigate if the results can be transferred to in-service teachers or to other teaching emotions. Furthermore, future studies could examine effects on other factors relevant to teaching emotions such as reactions to student behavior, which have been described as central for the causation of teaching emotions in prior studies (i.e., “reciprocal model of teaching emotions”). The present study stimulates such new studies and adds important knowledge to the understanding of topic specificity and topic-specific antecedents of anticipated enjoyment for teaching, which are relevant for teacher education and professional development.
Highlights
The preparation of motivated teachers is one of the central goals of initial teacher education, as teaching motivation has been found to be one criterion for teacher competence (Kunter et al, 2013)
The initial measurement model for the universal values showed no sufficient fit to the data [χ2(34) = 84.335, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.88, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.09, SRMR = 0.09]
For the psychological distance scale, the theoretical model achieved a sufficient fit to the data [χ2(51) = 79.239, CFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMR = 0.06)
Summary
The preparation of motivated teachers is one of the central goals of initial teacher education, as teaching motivation has been found to be one criterion for teacher competence (Kunter et al, 2013). Within the framework of professional action competence, teaching motivation was described as “enthusiasm for teaching” (Kunter et al, 2013). This enthusiasm has been found to be linked to student enjoyment through the enthusiasm students perceive when their teachers teach (Frenzel et al, 2009a; Keller et al, 2014). This increased student enjoyment in turn positively affects students’ learning and achievement (Trigwell et al, 2012; Frenzel, 2014). Teacher enthusiasm was linked to student performance (Mahler et al, 2018)
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