Effects of teacher framing on student engagement during collaborative reasoning discussions

Teachers' autonomy support and student engagement: A systematic literature review of longitudinal studies

Autonomy support is one of the most crucial determinants of teaching practice for student engagement. No literature review on the relations between autonomy support and student engagement existed to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this study presents a systematic literature review from perspectives of landscapes, methodology characters, patterns of identified studies, and autonomy-supportive strategies. Overall, 31 articles were reviewed. Followed by PRISMA guidelines, the results yielded several interesting facts: First, studies on such topics surged starting from 2015 and were mostly conducted in the United States (32%) and Korea (16%). Publications were scattered but heavily gathered around psychological and educational journals such as the Journal of Educational Psychology (9.7%); Learning and Instruction (9.7%). Most often, studies recruited participants from upper secondary schools (58%). Data were collected using solely questionnaires (93.5%) following a two-wave design (51.6%) and were analyzed by applying structural equation models (48.4%). Moreover, most of the studies failed to provide concrete autonomy-supportive teaching strategies. Instead, quite often studies (93%) investigated its relations with student engagement from a macro perspective. Within mentioned strategies, they were mostly related to the teaching process, there is a limited investigation of autonomy-supportive teaching practice used before and after instruction. This pattern of results suggested an urgent need for more longitudinal studies on specific teaching strategies that hold the potential to maximize student engagement. Limitations and suggestions for future studies were provided accordingly.

A Cooperative Learning Intervention to Promote Social Inclusion in Heterogeneous Classrooms

Concerning challenges with the social inclusion of children with special educational needs (SEN), it is imperative to evaluate teacher interventions that promote social inclusion. This study aimed to investigate the effects of cooperative learning (CL) intervention on social inclusion. In addition, it was investigated to what degree CL implementation affected the outcomes. Fifty-six teachers of 958 fifth-grade children were randomly selected to intervention and control groups upon recruitment to the study. The intervention teachers received training and coaching in CL and implemented this approach three to four times a week for 15 weeks. The results showed a significant but small effect of CL on children's social acceptance, but no significant effect on children's friendships and perceptions of classroom relationships. The degree of CL implementation had effect on children's social acceptance, but the effect was not consistent across social acceptance measures as a friend or a groupmate. Thus, it can be concluded that CL, conducted with the length and intensity of this study, may not lead to substantial changes in the social inclusion of children with SEN. In future studies, more focus needs to be devoted to teacher implementation of the CL approach.