TY - JOUR

T1 - Topic Specificity and Antecedents for Preservice Biology Teachers’ Anticipated Enjoyment for Teaching About Socioscientific Issues

T2 - Investigating Universal Values and Psychological Distance

AU - Büssing, Alexander Georg

AU - Dupont, Jacqueline

AU - Menzel, Susanne

N1 - Funding information: We acknowledge Marina Berling for supporting the data collection. Parts of this article (in a manuscript version) form part of the publication-based dissertation of AB. Funding. The publication of this article was funded by the Open Access Fund of Leibniz Universität Hannover.

PY - 2020/7/24

Y1 - 2020/7/24

N2 - Enjoyment for teaching represents one of the most frequently reported teaching emotions and positively affects student outcomes. Therefore, researchers and teacher educators need to understand its nature and underlying appraisal processes to prepare motivated teachers as part of initial teacher education. Using cross-sectional questionnaire data from 189 German biology preservice teachers (73.5% female, meanage = 23.45 years, SDage = 3.71 years), we empirically tested the topic-specific structure and antecedents of participants’ anticipated enjoyment for teaching. We adapted the established Teacher Emotion Scale to measure preservice teachers’ trait-based enjoyment for teaching by reframing the items with the environmental socioscientific issues of the return of wild wolves and climate change and the health socioscientific issue of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the best fit of a topic-specific model. We also found different correlations for the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about the issues, but no significant differences in means. Concerning further topic-specific antecedents, the environmentally oriented basic value of universalism predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about the return of wolves, and the socially oriented universal value of benevolence predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Both values inconsistently predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about climate change. While this is in line with the complex nature of this socioscientific issue, psychological distance was a predictor for the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about every topic. While these effects remained stable when controlling for demographic variables, male participants showed a higher anticipated enjoyment for teaching about wolves and about climate change, and female preservice teachers for teaching about preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Further studies are needed to investigate if the results can be transferred to in-service teachers or to other teaching emotions. Furthermore, future studies could examine effects on other factors relevant to teaching emotions such as reactions to student behavior, which have been described as central for the causation of teaching emotions in prior studies (i.e., “reciprocal model of teaching emotions”). The present study stimulates such new studies and adds important knowledge to the understanding of topic specificity and topic-specific antecedents of anticipated enjoyment for teaching, which are relevant for teacher education and professional development.

AB - Enjoyment for teaching represents one of the most frequently reported teaching emotions and positively affects student outcomes. Therefore, researchers and teacher educators need to understand its nature and underlying appraisal processes to prepare motivated teachers as part of initial teacher education. Using cross-sectional questionnaire data from 189 German biology preservice teachers (73.5% female, meanage = 23.45 years, SDage = 3.71 years), we empirically tested the topic-specific structure and antecedents of participants’ anticipated enjoyment for teaching. We adapted the established Teacher Emotion Scale to measure preservice teachers’ trait-based enjoyment for teaching by reframing the items with the environmental socioscientific issues of the return of wild wolves and climate change and the health socioscientific issue of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the best fit of a topic-specific model. We also found different correlations for the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about the issues, but no significant differences in means. Concerning further topic-specific antecedents, the environmentally oriented basic value of universalism predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about the return of wolves, and the socially oriented universal value of benevolence predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Both values inconsistently predicted the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about climate change. While this is in line with the complex nature of this socioscientific issue, psychological distance was a predictor for the anticipated enjoyment for teaching about every topic. While these effects remained stable when controlling for demographic variables, male participants showed a higher anticipated enjoyment for teaching about wolves and about climate change, and female preservice teachers for teaching about preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Further studies are needed to investigate if the results can be transferred to in-service teachers or to other teaching emotions. Furthermore, future studies could examine effects on other factors relevant to teaching emotions such as reactions to student behavior, which have been described as central for the causation of teaching emotions in prior studies (i.e., “reciprocal model of teaching emotions”). The present study stimulates such new studies and adds important knowledge to the understanding of topic specificity and topic-specific antecedents of anticipated enjoyment for teaching, which are relevant for teacher education and professional development.

KW - appraisal

KW - enjoyment

KW - psychological distance

KW - teacher identity

KW - teacher professional competence

KW - teaching emotion

KW - values

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089234182&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01536

DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01536

M3 - Article

C2 - 32793033

AN - SCOPUS:85089234182

VL - 11

SP - 1536

JO - Frontiers in psychology

JF - Frontiers in psychology

SN - 1664-1078

M1 - 1536

ER -