A micro-perspective on students’ behavioral engagement in the context of teachers’ instructional support during seatwork: Sources of variability and the role of teacher adaptive support

Abstract

Despite increased acknowledgement of the significance of situational factors to engagement, engagement is traditionally seen as a student characteristic. In this study, we investigated to what extent variation in observational measures of behavioral student engagement during seatwork is due to students versus teachers, teacher-student dyads, or situational (i.e., variation in time) effects. Additionally, we studied whether adaptive support during teacher-student interactions contributes to student engagement following that interaction. A cross-classified multilevel analysis of 324 video- and audio-recorded secondary school teacher-student interactions showed that situational factors and error were the strongest source of variability in student engagement. Other than expected, teacher-related and dyad-related variability were limited. Although behavioral engagement after teacher-student interaction was significantly higher than pre-interaction student engagement, higher post-interaction levels were not related to the level of adaptive support provided during the teacher-student interaction. These findings imply that situational factors deserve more attention in engagement research, for example by investigating what situational factors contribute to engagement. For teachers, the time-variant, situation-dependent nature of engagement opens up valuable opportunities to actively design optimal learning situations.