Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Educational Psychology

Advisor

Anastasiya Lipnevich

Committee Members

David Rindskopf

Steven Holochwost

Başak Çalık

Michal Levi-Keren

Subject Categories

Elementary Education | Elementary Education and Teaching

Keywords

student enjoyment, teacher enjoyment, classroom feedback, achievement emotions, emotional climate

Abstract

Enjoyment is increasingly recognised as a keystone emotion in contemporary models of academic motivation and learning (Pekrun, 2006; Ryan & Deci, 2020). Grounded in Control-Value, Expectancy-Value, and Self-Determination theories, the present study tracked reciprocal affective processes in Israeli mathematics classrooms across ten lessons. Seven teachers and their 257 students (112 fourth-graders; 145 eighth-graders) completed parallel post-lesson questionnaires assessing feedback use, enjoyment, and perceived difficulty. Multilevel ordinal mixed-effects models, latent-growth curve models, and Bayesian random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were estimated to disentangle within-person fluctuations from between-person differences (Hamaker et al., 2015). Confirmatory-factor analyses supported scalar invariance of the key scales over time, allowing robust longitudinal comparisons.

Praise emerged as a reliable catalyst of positive affect, markedly increasing teachers’ enjoyment and showing neutral-to-positive associations for students. In contrast, corrective feedback dampened enjoyment for both groups, while criticism invigorated teachers yet depressed student enjoyment. Student enjoyment declined modestly over the study period (β = -.02 per lesson), whereas teachers’ feedback routines remained stable. Trait-level teacher and student enjoyment were moderately correlated (r = .29), but lesson-to-lesson cross-lagged effects were negligible, indicating that enduring classroom climate - rather than micro-temporal emotional contagion - accounts for shared affect. Grade level did not moderate any substantive paths.

These findings refine reciprocal feedback-emotion theory by demonstrating that (a) the valence and specificity of feedback are stronger emotional levers than short-term affect transmission, and (b) developmental stage does not attenuate teacher-student affective coupling when curricular stakes and feedback norms are held constant. Practically, the results underscore the value of training teachers to pair competence-affirming praise with autonomy-supportive guidance while minimising directive correction. Policy initiatives that embed low-stakes, strategy-focused checkpoints within high-stakes mathematics curricula may sustain reciprocal enjoyment, and deepen engagement and learning.

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