What Makes Learning Fun ?

Teachers' and students' enjoyment in class feed each other, a new study finds.

Student engagement could have a simple origin: their teacher’s contagious joy of teaching. To test this hypothesis, a team of researchers...

followed 69 teachers and their 1,643 students (Grades 5 to 10) during the first 6 months of a school year in Germany. 

Based on surveys and observations, it appeared that the teachers’ level of enjoyment at the beginning of the school year was positively related to their students’ level of engagement (4 weeks later) and enjoyment (at midterm.)

Interestingly, another relation was found: students’ level engagement 4 weeks into the year was related to their teacher’s enjoyment at midterm--which shows that the relation is reciprocal, and that teachers’ and students’ emotions and behavior do indeed feed each other.

Source: Frenzel et alia (2018)