Student Behavioral Engagement in the Context of Teacher-Student Interactions: Its Nature and Relation with Contingent Support

Abstract

Despite increased acknowledgement of the significance of situational factors to engagement, engagement or on-task behavior is traditionally seen as a student characteristic. In this study, we investigated to what extent variation in behavioral engagement in the context of teacher-student interactions is indeed due to betweenstudent effects or should rather be accredited to teachers, teacher-student dyads, or situational (i.e., variation in time) effects. Additionally, we studied whether postinteraction behavioral engagement is influenced by contingent support provision during those teacher-student interactions. Based on our cross-classified multilevel analyses of observational coding of 324 video- and audio-recorded secondary school teacherstudent interactions, we conclude that behavioral engagement in the context of teacherstudent interactions is a function of something far more complex than individual student tendencies alone: it mainly varies from situation to situation. Although post-interaction behavioral engagement was significantly higher than pre-interaction engagement, higher post-interaction levels were not due to the contingent support provided during the teacher-student interaction. These findings imply a need for reconceptualizing (behavioral) engagement as a situational rather than as a student construct. Practically, the time-variant, situation-dependent nature of engagement opens up valuable opportunities for teachers to actively design optimal learning situations.