The Impact of Teachers' Emotional Expression Components on Students' Affective and Behavioral Engagement in Elementary School

This study aims to examine the impact of the components of teachers’ emotional expression, namely joy, pride, love, anger, exhaustion, and hopelessness, on their elementary school students' emotional and behavioral engagement. The research was conducted in the American Division of Dover International School on a sample of 7 female teachers and 45 students (both boys and girls) aged between 8 and 12 years. A mixed-method approach was adopted, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative tools: the Teacher Emotion Questionnaire, the Engagement vs. Disaffection with Learning Student Report, and the Student Engagement Classroom Observation Tool. Data was analyzed using multiple linear regression and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) through SPSS. The results indicated that the model was statistically significant at the 0.05 level, explaining 27.8% of the variance in emotional engagement. Notably, hopelessness and anger emerged as the most influential emotional components in predicting students’ emotional and behavioral engagement whether positively or negatively. Classroom observation findings further confirmed that the emotional expressions displayed by teachers directly influenced students' attentiveness and participation during instructional time. The study recommends providing professional development for teachers to enhance their awareness and regulation of emotional expression in the classroom, thereby fostering a more engaging and emotionally supportive learning environment.
Keywords: Teacher emotional expression, Student engagement, Emotional engagement, Behavioral engagement, Control-Value Theory, Classroom climate