Boredom is a standing student complaint and it tracks worse motivation, strategies and achievement. The obvious suspect is the person at the front. Testing that properly needs the teacher’s own boredom measured too, not just inferred from the class. So 437 students and 17 of their teachers kept a two-week diary, with 2,675 post-class evaluations analyzed by . Does the boredom transfer?
What transferred was the perception, not the teacher’s actual state. Teacher boredom was negatively associated with students’ motivation. But the relationship between teacher boredom and students’ was not significant, meaning students did not accurately judge whether their teacher was bored. And it was students’ perception of teacher boredom, rather than the real thing, that predicted their learning motivation.
Boredom is a common complaint among students and it has been found to associate negatively with academic motivation, strategies and achievement. That makes it worth asking what exacerbates it in class, and the person at the front is the obvious place to look.
The study examined the influence of a teacher’s boredom on students’ in-class boredom and learning experience, with four quantities in play: teacher boredom, students’ perceived teacher boredom, student boredom, and student learning motivation. The question only becomes answerable by keeping the teacher’s own state separate from the students’ reading of it.
A total of 437 students, averaging 14.5 years old, and 17 of their teachers took part in an study with a two-week diary. Multilevel modeling of 2,675 post-class evaluations indicated that teacher boredom was negatively associated with students’ motivation.
Then the chain breaks. The relationship between teacher boredom and students’ perceived teacher boredom was not significant, which means students did not accurately perceive whether their teacher was bored. analysis revealed that it was students’ perception of teacher boredom that predicted their learning motivation. Read the design before the lesson: this is observational experience sampling with nothing manipulated, and 17 teachers is a small number of upper-level units.
wat. Students could not tell when their teacher was bored, and it was what they believed they saw that moved their motivation.
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It relocates the problem. Students respond to the boredom they think they see, and they read it badly, so a teacher who is engaged can still be costing motivation by looking otherwise.
How do we know?
Tam and colleagues ran an experience sampling study in which 437 students and 17 teachers completed a two-week diary, analyzing 2,675 post-class evaluations with multilevel modeling and indirect effect analysis.
What is still unknown
An observational experience sampling study, so nothing was manipulated and the direction of the effect is not established. Seventeen teachers is a small upper level for a multilevel model.
Learn something?
Where to next
You were told you are a visual learner. Should you be taught only in pictures?education
Do music lessons or chess make a child better at subjects nobody practiced?education
Would you shock yourself rather than sit and think?boredom