A Study On The Correlation Between Teacher Interpersonal Behavior And Student Engagement In English Learning In Junior High School English Classrooms

Teacher interpersonal behavior,as one of the major ways to transfer information,emotions,and attitudes between teachers and students,refers to the behaviors and attitudes that teachers exhibit in their interactions with students.It can be divided into two dimensions: Agency and Communion,according to Interpersonal Circle for the Teacher.Agency refers to interpersonal influence and control,and it describes the extent to which the teacher attempts to dominate and control the classroom.Communion,on the other hand,refers to interpersonal closeness,connection,or affiliation,and represents the extent to which teachers convey a sense of emotional belonging to their students.Based on Self-Determination Theory,teacher interpersonal behavior,as a paramount aspect of the classroom learning environment,has an impact on student engagement by supporting or hindering their basic psychological needs.Although a plethora of studies at home and abroad have confirmed that the teacher is a key factor to predict student engagement,there is still a dearth of studies associating teacher interpersonal behavior with student engagement in the context of Chinese foreign language education.Given this situation,the current study sets out to investigate the correlation between interpersonal behavior of English teachers and student engagement in English learning,and to explore the action mechanisms behind it.Thereby,three research questions are put forward:1.What is the distribution of teacher interpersonal behavior in English reading lessons in junior high school? And is there any difference in interpersonal style between novice teachers and experienced teachers?2.Is there a correlation between teacher interpersonal behavior and students’ English learning engagement? If so,what are the correlations among the dimensions of the two?3.What is the mechanism by which teacher interpersonal behavior affects student engagement in English learning based on Self-Determination Theory?This study employs the mixed method,combining classroom observation of four novice and experienced English teachers in Junior two,with questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews for their students.By processing and analyzing the collected data,the results are demonstrated below:1.English teachers’ Directing and Compliant appear most frequently among eight interpersonal behaviors,whereas Dissatisfied and Confrontational appear least frequently in English reading lessons.And novice teachers have a student-oriented interpersonal style,while experienced teachers’ interpersonal style is teacher-oriented.2.Both dimensions of teacher interpersonal behavior are positively correlated with four dimensions of student engagement in English learning.But compared with Agency dimension,the Communion dimension has a more significant correlation with student engagement.Besides,teachers’ positive interpersonal behaviors are positively and signally correlated with students’ behavioral,cognitive and agentic engagement in English,with the most significant correlation for the Helpful behavior.In contrast,only the Dissatisfied behavior among negative interpersonal behaviors is negatively and significantly correlated with all four dimensions of students’ English learning engagement,while the remaining Uncertain,Confrontational and Imposing behaviors are remarkably related to only one or two dimensions of student engagement.3.English teachers’ positive interpersonal behaviors contribute to enhancing students’ English learning engagement by supporting their basic psychological needs of autonomy,competence or relatedness,while teachers’ negative interpersonal behaviors provoke the declining student engagement in English learning by frustrating these needs.By virtue of the results above,some practical implications such as transforming the interpersonal behavior from highly-dominant to highly-cooperative for EFL teachers,launching teacher experience sharing seminars on the promotion of teacherstudent positive interactions for school administrators,and employing learning strategies flexibly for students,so as to build good student-teacher relationship and enhance student engagement in English learning.