The role of teacher-student relationships in supporting student engagement and lecturer motivation

Abstract

Aims of project: • Investigate the role of residential fieldwork in fostering TSRs at stage one. • Investigate the impact of TSRs on students (engagement) and lecturers (attitudes and motivation Background/context to project: Positive TSRs increase student’s engagement (Umbach and Wawrzynski, 2005), intrinsic motivation (Komarraju et al., 2010) and active learning (Morganett, 1991), all important elements of the learning experience. Furthermore, beneficial TSRs can increases students’ sense of belonging to their learning environment (Hagenauer and Volet, 2014b), which can have a strong influence on drop-out/failure rates (Wilcox et al., 2005; Palmer et al., 2009), and support the engagement of minority students (Wilson et al., 2015). Many aspects of the TSR in the context of higher education (HE) have barely been researched yet (Hagenauer and Volet, 2014b). Fieldwork is widely recognised as bringing many benefits complementary to traditional classroom based learning, including developing practical and professional knowledge, skills and attitudes (Maw et al., 2011). In contrast, the potential of fieldwork in reinforcing TSRs has rarely been mentioned in the literature, and only as a minor advantage: “it provides opportunities for staff-student interaction” (Maw et al., 2011) or “it breaks down barriers between students and staff” (Gold, 1991), without any further reflection on how to exploit this potential. Studies about fieldwork in GEES subjects do state that fieldwork has strong affective effects on students (Boyle et al., 2007; Stokes and Boyle, 2009) and that they enjoy the increased proximity to teachers (Fuller et al., 2006), but to our knowledge no detailed investigation into how field courses affect TSRs has been conducted so far. The effect of TSRs effect on the teacher has been very little examined in the context of (Hagenauer and Volet, 2014b). It has been shown that students meeting teachers’ expectations of engagement is a powerful source of positive emotion (Hagenauer and Volet, 2014a). In this regard, a field trip is an ideal place for teachers to feel students’ commitment to learning, as it is a demonstrably more enjoyable setting than the classroom (Kern and Carpenter, 1984). Therefore, it seems probable that field courses have a strong potential to increase lecturer motivation, but this remains to be demonstrated directly.