Relationships between teachers' presentations of classroom tasks and students' engagement in those tasks

Correlated the presence/absence of various teacher task-presentation statements with measures of subsequent student task engagement to investigate the possibility that expectations about classroom tasks that teachers communicate to students in the process of presenting those tasks might affect student engagement in the tasks. Reading and math lessons were observed (8-25 times each) in 2 4th-grade, 2 5th-grade, and 2 6th-grade classes. Typically, each reading or math period was subdivided into 2-4 tasks. For example, a math period might begin with a review of the previous day's seatwork/homework assignment, followed by presentation of a new concept or skill, followed by presentation of a new assignment. Teacher-presentation data and student-engagement data were collected for each task observed. Contrary to expectation, student engagement was generally higher when teachers moved directly into tasks than when they began with some presentation statement. Within the subset of tasks that were begun with teacher-presentation statements, those presentation statements classified as likely to have negative effects on student engagement were associated with lower student engagement, but there was no corresponding tendency for teacher-presentation statements classified as likely to have positive effects on student engagement to be associated with high rates of student engagement. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).