Reciprocal teacher-student transmissions: Linking teachers' emotions with students' emotions and relationship quality

Reciprocal emotional transmissions between teachers and students have recently gained more research interest. Teacher-student relationship (TSR) quality is proposed to play an important role, but this transmission pathway lacks empirical evidence. Further, existing studies on this subject tend to focus on positive emotions, while associations of negative emotions are mostly observed within cross-sectional designs.

This study aims to investigate TSR quality as a transmission factor between teachers' and students' positive and negative emotions. We assume this to be a reciprocal process. Our sample consisted of n = 1638 students (M_age = 13.95, SD = 0.86) and n = 118 German and mathematics teachers (M_age = 45.29, SD = 10.68) from n = 86 public secondary school classes in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany.

Longitudinal questionnaire data were gathered in three waves. The present analyses investigated whether teacher-reported relationship quality between the teacher and the class explained the effects of teacher-reported enjoyment of teaching and teachers' anxiety on students' enjoyment and anxiety in class across two subject domains.

In mathematics, TSR at T1 was significantly related to teacher emotions at T2, and student emotions at T2 were significantly related to TSR at T3. In German, teacher emotions at T2 were significantly related to TSR at T3. A direct relation between teacher anxiety at T1 and student anxiety at T2 emerged.

In our study, we could observe transmission effects, although the pathways differed more than anticipated. Further research incorporating contextual factors like school subject is needed.