Emotion Transmission in the Classroom Revisited: A Reciprocal Effects Model of Teacher and Student Enjoyment

Enjoyment is one of the most relevant and frequently experienced discrete emotions for both teachers and students in classroom learning contexts. Based on theories of emotion transmission between interaction partners, we propose a reciprocal effects model linking teachers' and students' enjoyment in class. The model suggests that there are positive reciprocal links between teachers' and students' enjoyment and that these links are mediated by teachers' and students' observations of each other's classroom behaviors. The model was tested using 3-wave longitudinal data collected across the 1st 6 months of a school year from N = 69 teachers (78% female) and their 1,643 students from Grades 5 to 10 (57% female). A multilevel structural equation model confirmed our mediation hypotheses. Teacher enjoyment at the beginning of the school year (Time 1 [T1]) was positively related to student perceptions of teachers' enthusiasm during teaching 4 weeks later (T2), which was positively related to student enjoyment at midterm (T3). Further, student enjoyment at T1 was positively related to teacher perceptions of their students' engagement in class at T2, which was positively related to teacher enjoyment at T3. This study is the first to provide longitudinal evidence of reciprocal emotion transmission between teachers and students. Implications for future research and teacher training are discussed. Educational Impact and Implications Statement Researchers, educational policymakers, and the general public agree that teachers should radiate enjoyment and thus "infect" their students with excitement about learning. However, emotional contagion in human interaction is not a one-way street. In this research, we proposed that teachers' and students' enjoyment in class are reciprocally linked via mutual social perceptions of how enthusiastic and engaged the interaction partners are. We tested our assumptions using 3-wave longitudinal data collected from approximately 70 classrooms (teachers and their students) across the first 6 months of a school year. The results fully confirmed our expectations. Our findings imply that teachers' emotional experiences in class depend on their students' emotions as much as students' emotional experiences depend on their teachers'. It thus seems that for classrooms to be enjoyable places for everyone involved, one must consider the needs and desires of both learners and teachers.