Civic education teachers foster an open classroom climate to prevent negative emotions and increase enjoyment¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (3 for, 2 mixed) · 1 study (1 associational), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Building on the finding that an open classroom climate relates to more enjoyment and less anxiety and boredom, the article recommends that teachers co-create a supportive emotional climate. It states: "Schools and teachers can try to improve the democratic climate during discussions by discussing current events (Siegel-Stechler, 2021), fostering student-teacher relationships, and students' collective efficacy for changes at schools (Maurissen et al., 2018)." The abstract notes fostering openness "can prevent the experience of negative emotions and increase students' experience of enjoyment."

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teachers able to encourage students to bring in political topics, express and respect diverse opinions during discussions of political and social issues

Constraints¶

• Based on observational cross-sectional data; causal effects of openness interventions are not established by this study

Target Learners¶

• upper-secondary students in civic education, especially vocational-school students

Target Learning Goals¶

• positive emotional experience in class
• political knowledge
• intended political participation

Affordances¶

• Cvt Civic Education Emotions Framework

Claims¶

• Open classroom climate is positively related to enjoyment and negatively related to anxiety and boredom in civic education, with no relation to shame [+M]
• Climate-emotion associations and the enjoyment-participation indirect effect hold when controlling for topic emotions and discussion frequency, but some emotion-outcome paths do not [+M]
• Activating emotions (enjoyment, shame, anxiety) relate positively and boredom negatively to intended political participation, with a significant indirect effect of classroom climate via enjoyment [+M]
• Enjoyment relates positively and shame, anxiety, and boredom relate negatively to political knowledge, but classroom climate is not significantly mediated via emotions for knowledge [~M]
• No association was found between open classroom climate and political knowledge in this Austrian vocational-school sample [~M]

Related Strategies¶

• Teaching strategies to prevent and manage negative emotions in learning
• Target both classroom agents in emotion regulation interventions by reducing teacher negative emotions and increasing student positive emotions

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Graf, E., Stempfer, L., Muis, K. R., & Goetz, T. (2023). Classroom emotions in civic education: A multilevel approach to antecedents and effects. Draft version 1.0, University of Vienna / McGill University (not peer-reviewed preprint). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101869