What the benefits of teachers with high positivity-ratio really are ? The happy teacher effect

Abstract

In the current study, our purpose was to extend the Fredrickson’s proposal of “positivity-ratio” to testify if the happy teacher effect was really matter with students’ learning outcomes. A teacher’s positivity-ratio greater than 3 was proposed as the major factor and the main key to his/her students’ learning outcomes, which included the inner attribution, outer attribution, teacher-and-student relationship, peer relationship, emotional well-being, self-efficacy, learning motivation, proactive coping for stress, self-acceptance, and positivity ratio. A total random sample of 1251 teachers and 747 students were recruited and measured by a Likert-typed 4-point survey questionnaire. The data were paired to teacher-and-student and analyzed by the Pearson correlations and the structural equation modeling (SEM). Results showed that the higher of the teacher’s positivity-ratio, the higher of the students’ inner attribution, emotional well-being, self-efficacy, learning motivation, proactive coping for stress, and self-acceptance were. Besides, the higher of the teacher’s positivity-ratio, the lower of the students’ outer attribution were. Therefore, the teacher’s positivity-ratio does really matter with students’ learning outcomes. The “happy teacher effect” was testified to be existed. In sum, the teacher’s positivity-ratio really does matter with the students’ learning outcomes. Finally, implications and suggestions for practice and further studies were also proposed.

本研究旨在擴增 Fredrickson 所提的「正向比值」假設，以進一步檢定「快樂教師效應」 是否與學生學習成果有所關連？本研究假設擁有正向比值大於等於 3 以上的教師，能夠直接 影響其所教授學生的學習成果。本研究隨機抽取 1,251 名中小學教師，及其所教授的班級學 生共 747 名為樣本。研究結果：（1）教師的正向比值愈高，其所教授學生的內在歸因、情緒 幸福感、自我效能、學習動機、正向因應壓力策略、與自我接納愈高；且教師的正向比值愈 高，其所教授學生的外在歸因愈低。（2）教師的正向比值確實會正向影響學生的學習結果，「快 樂教師效應」是被證實存在的。教師的正向比值高低，確實與其所教授學生的學習成果有所 關連。最後，提出隱含涵義與未來在實務應用的建議。