1. Introduction
Prior studies have documented a lack of persistence as post-secondary students change majors from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to non-STEM majors [
1,
2,
3]. This has negative outcomes such as workforce shortages [
4,
5,
6], limited diversity and representation in STEM [
7], and reduced innovation and technical development [
8]. Among the key reasons for the lack of persistence in STEM majors is how STEM students identify themselves as STEM learners (or not) in a STEM field [
9,
10,
11]. Additionally, classroom engagement is another factor to issues of persistence and retention of students within STEM spaces [
12,
13,
14], specifically within STEM research programs in higher education [
15,
16,
17,
18]. Furthermore, Daempfle [
19] argued that lack of classroom communication between faculty and students is among one of the contributing factors that lead to attrition within STEM fields. The researcher asserted this by stating that “students were generally interested in the sciences but were ‘turned off’ by the structure and climate of the classroom” (p. 41). Such statements suggest that less engaging classrooms taught by unapproachable faculty lead to the attrition of students from STEM fields [
20,
21,
22].
In addition to the classroom environment, teacher self-disclosure also plays a significant role in the learning process across STEM disciplines [
23,
24]. A combination of a suitable classroom environment and instances of teacher self-disclosure aid students in understanding the course material [
25,
26,
27], develop students’ participation within learning situations [
28,
29], and enhance their overall learning experience [
26]. This, in return, has the potential to lead to retention and persistence within STEM fields [
23,
24]. While working with teachers across the field of communication studies, Cayanus and Martin [
1] classified teacher self-disclosure in three dimensions: amount, relevance, and negativity.
This article investigates the research question: What is the direct relationship between teacher self-disclosure and the behavioral and emotional classroom engagement of undergraduate students enrolled in a STEM research program? It can be argued that instances of teacher self-disclosure have the potential to enhance or hinder levels of student engagement in the classroom. More specifically, teacher self-disclosure instances, including amount, relevance, and negativity, can significantly influence the behavioral and emotional classroom engagement of undergraduate students in a STEM research program. By carefully considering these factors, teachers can effectively utilize self-disclosure as a tool to enhance student engagement, which, in turn, can positively contribute to their persistence within STEM.
Based on the results, we illustrate the significance of specific dimensions of teacher self-disclosure in promoting or hindering levels of classroom engagement for undergraduate students enrolled in a STEM research program. The findings have the potential to generate recommendations that can contribute to the advancement of teaching and learning in STEM research programs and higher education classes. By implementing these recommendations, there is potential to enhance student engagement, improve learning outcomes, and elevate the overall quality of STEM education at the higher education level, which, in turn, can have a positive impact on student persistence and retention within STEM.
1.1. Literature Review
To ground the study, we explain the concepts of teacher self-disclosure and emotional and behavioral engagement. In addition, we also describe the relation between teacher self-disclosure and students’ levels of emotional and behavioral engagement.
1.1.1. Teacher Self-Disclosure
Wheeless and Grotz [
30] defined self-disclosure as “any message about the self that a person communicates to another” (p. 338). Jourard [
31] explained that deciding to self-disclose is based on positive feelings, such as an attitude of trust and love. For defining themselves within academic context, teachers can choose to voluntarily disclose their personal information, thoughts, and feelings to students [
29]. Cayanus and Martin [
1] suggested three dimensions of teacher self-disclosure—amount, relevance, and negativity. The amount of self-disclosure has to do with how much and how often teachers self-disclose their personal information. For example, a math teacher might occasionally mention their passion for hiking when discussing real-life applications of geometry. Relevance refers to the relevancy of the self-disclosure instance to the topics being discussed in the classroom and related to the course content. For instance, a science teacher might share a personal experience of conducting an experiment that aligns with the current lesson, making the self-disclosure relevant and enhancing students’ understanding of the topic. Negativity deals with revealing negative experiences and feelings within the classroom context, for instance, expressing negative feelings towards a colleague, disagreements with the department, or general feelings or comments of sexism or racism towards an individual.
When it comes to STEM spaces, it is important to examine teacher self-disclosure, as this construct is connected with classroom engagement [
29,
32] and contributes to persistence in STEM spaces [
33]. Rassmussen and Mishna [
34], who wrote a book chapter reviewing various studies on teacher self-disclosure on different educational levels, concluded that teacher self-disclosure, especially related to math concepts, were positively received by undergraduate students as it helped them in understanding better the course content and retention of points covered in the classroom. Additionally, studies conducted at the college level within various disciplines showed that instances of teacher self-disclosure that are occasional, not negative, and are relevant to the course content supported students in the recall and retention of the lecture material [
35,
36,
37,
38].
1.1.2. Emotional and Behavioral Engagement
Emotional engagement focuses on concerns associated with aspects of students’ feelings of belongingness and feelings about the classroom environment [
39]. Examples of such feelings include interest, boredom, happiness, sadness, and anxiety within learning situations. This also captures students’ relationships with their classmates and instructors [
32,
40,
41,
42,
43,
44]. We followed the classification of emotional engagement, as given by Renninger and Bachrach [
41], which has four distinct dimensions: interest, achievement orientation, anxiety, and frustration.
Behavioral engagement is defined as students’ self-reported participation and effort during class [
40], and encompasses aspects such as attentiveness, diligence, and time spent on in-class tasks [
45,
46,
47]. It is linked to students’ adherence to classroom norms and expectations [
35], which is indicated by their active listening, as well as interactions and contributions to the learning process [
48]. Behavioral engagement is directly associated with how students participate in the class, take interest in academic tasks, and respect the existing classroom rules [
32,
35,
49,
50].
There are several aspects informing the significance of studying emotional and behavioral engagement in higher education and, more specifically, within STEM. First, students’ emotional and behavioral engagement is associated with the development of critical thinking [
51,
52,
53] and integration of the learned information into the learning process [
54]. Additionally, emotional and behavioral engagement informs the level of persistence, which is one of the main issues among undergraduate students within STEM programs [
55]. Studies with undergraduate students within STEM and non-STEM disciplines showed that a sense of belonging, especially classroom belongingness, is strongly related to behavioral and emotional engagement [
53,
56]. Such studies argued that students who opt for STEM as their desired field of study demonstrated not only higher levels of emotional and behavioral engagement with STEM classes, but also persistence in STEM fields.
1.1.3. Relation between Teacher Self-Disclosure and Emotional and Behavioral Engagement
For emotional engagement and teacher self-disclosure, the existing literature suggested that teacher self-disclosure characterized as being positive, relevant, and moderately recurrent triggers the emotional engagement of students within the classroom setting [
1,
35,
57]. This can be supported by the fact that such instances of teacher self-disclosure are perceived by the students as being transparent and credible, which further helps them in developing a connection with the teacher. On the contrary, studies conducted by Cayanus and Martin [
1], Rosborough and colleagues [
58], Frisby and Sidelinger [
59], and Goodboy and colleagues [
60] explained that the negative domain of teacher self-disclosure could affect the emotional aspect of students’ classroom engagement negatively. For example, sharing negative opinions about the institution or negative opinions about the subject being taught might create feelings of negativity and violate students’ expectations of a positive learning environment, which makes students emotionally disengaged in such learning contexts.
Skinner and Pitzer [
61] and Wang and Eccles [
62] also argued that positive self-disclosure and positive interactions in STEM and non-STEM disciplines, respectively, could be considered among the factors that encourage secondary and post-secondary students to maintain good attendance, which is perceived as an indicator of classroom behavioral engagement. Furthermore, studies by Kelly and Turner [
63] and Kromka and Goodboy [
35] suggested that undergraduate students become more behaviorally engaged in instances when they feel their teachers care about them, through positive and moderate amounts of self-disclosure.
The abovementioned studies suggest that instances of teacher self-disclosure that are positive, relevant, and moderately frequent can positively affect students’ levels of emotional and behavioral engagement [
64]. However, this area is still unexplored when it comes to examining the direct relationship between teacher self-disclosure and levels of emotional and behavioral engagement. Also, the literature has not examined the relationship between emotional and behavioral engagement and specific dimensions of teacher self-disclosure within the context of STEM education. Hence, we designed this study to examine the potential direct relationship between specific factors of teacher self-disclosure and students’ levels of emotional and behavioral engagement within a STEM research program.
3. Results
Before running the SEM analysis, we tested the factor structure of each of the proposed constructs in this study. While calculating the CFA structure for the teacher self-disclosure survey, we assessed the fit of the competing models. Based on the fit indices, as stated by Hu and Bentler [
69], we decided to follow the three-factor correlated model as it was more suitable in this study since it resulted in better fit indices (χ
2 (74) = 98.79,
p = 0.029; CFI = 0.981, TLI = 0.977, RMSEA = 0.040 (
p = 0.780) with 90% confidence interval of [0.014, 0.060], SRMR = 0.052).
For emotional engagement, we took guidance from Kong et al. [
66] and found that a first-order four-factor correlated model had an acceptable fit (χ
2 (202) = 399.807,
p < 0.001; CFI = 0.924, TLI = 0.913, RMSEA = 0.069 (
p = 0.001) with 90% confidence interval of [0.059, 0.078], SRMR = 0.066), after correlating the error terms of two items “Learning about research is tough, but I am happy as long as I can get good results” and “Learning research is tough, but I am satisfied when I get good results after making an effort” for the achievement sub-construct.
For behavioral engagement, a two-factor correlated model with the factors of diligence and attentiveness showed an acceptable model fit (χ2 (53) = 137.260, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.942, TLI = 0.927, RMSEA = 0.087 (p = 0.001) with 90% confidence interval of [0.070, 0.106], SRMR = 0.059). A lower correlation between attentiveness and diligence (r = 0.28, p < 0.05) suggested that these constructs can be treated as separate first-order constructs.
Relation between Teacher Self-Disclosure and Emotional and Behavioral Engagement
To understand the direct relationship between teacher self-disclosure and behavioral and emotional classroom engagement, we examined the structural parameters of the structural model, as given in
Figure 2.
The initial fit of the model was not in the acceptable range, as proposed by Hu and Bentler (χ
2 (1042) = 1609.201,
p < 0.001; CFI = 0.900, TLI = 0.894, RMSEA = 0.051 (
p = 0.345) with 90% confidence interval of [0.046, 0.056], SRMR = 0.061). Based on the modification indices, as well as being guided by the item wording, we correlated the error terms for two of the items for the diligence sub-construct “If I work on problems persistently, I am sure that I will get the right answer” and “If I cannot solve a problem right away, I will persist in trying different methods until I get the solution” as well as for the two items in the achievement orientation sub-construct “Though learning about research is tough, I feel happy when I can finish the tasks” and “Though learning about research is boring, I am happy when I get good results”. These modifications improved the model fit substantially, as χ
2 (1040) = 1548.510,
p < 0.001; CFI = 0.913, TLI = 0.905, RMSEA = 0.048 (
p = 0.687) with 90% confidence interval of [0.043, 0.053], SRMR = 0.061. The parameter estimates of this structural model are given in
Table 6.
The findings suggest that the sub-construct for teacher self-disclosure, amount, had a positive significant relation with the sub-construct anxiety (Γ = 0.284, p < 0.001). This suggests that for each unit increase in amount, there is a 0.284 unit increase in emotional engagement anxiety.
For relevance, we found a significant positive relation with one of the sub constructs of emotional engagement—interest (Γ = 0.302, p < 0.001)—indicating that for each unit increase in relevance, there is a 0.302 increase in emotional engagement interest. In addition, relevance had a negative relationship with other sub-constructs of emotional engagement, i.e., anxiety (Γ = −0.483, p < 0.001) and frustration (Γ = −0.269, p < 0.001), indicating that for each unit increase in relevance, there is a 0.483 decrease in emotional engagement anxiety and a 0.269 decrease in emotional engagement frustration. For the behavioral engagement sub-constructs, relevance had a positive relationship with attentiveness (Γ = 0.236, p = 0.002) and diligence (Γ = 0.377, p < 0.05), indicating that for each unit increase in relevance, a 0.236 unit increase in behavioral engagement attentiveness and 0.377 unit increase in behavioral engagement diligence are expected. For the last sub-construct of teacher self-disclosure, negativity, none of the sub-constructs of emotional and behavioral engagement had a significant relation.
4. Discussion
The main research question guiding our research was: What is the relationship between teacher self-disclosure and emotional and behavioral engagement? The focus of this article is based on the idea that instances of teacher self-disclosure, including amount, relevance, and negativity, can either enhance or hinder levels of student engagement in the classroom. Hence, teachers can implement teacher self-disclosure instances to promote student engagement, which can, in return, have positive outcomes such as increasing students’ persistence within STEM.
Firstly, the results show that there is a positive relationship between one of the dimensions of teacher self-disclosure, amount, and one of the sub-constructs of emotional engagement, anxiety. This suggests that when the teacher uses multiple instances of self-disclosure, it may lead to feelings of anxiety in STEM undergraduates, which might affect their learning process. Prior research supports the view that instances of teacher self-disclosure can have negative effects when they are used more than needed and out of context [
1,
60,
65].
Secondly, the obtained results also showed a positive relationship between another dimension of teacher self-disclosure, relevance, and one of the sub-constructs of emotional engagement—interest. This relation demonstrates that instances of teacher self-disclosure that are relevant in nature to the course content increase students’ levels of interest in the course and the learning experience. Based on that, by incorporating relevant self-disclosure instances, educators can effectively cultivate students’ interest that can directly contribute to their long-term commitment and persistence within STEM disciplines. The findings resonate with the inferences deduced by Cayanus et al. [
65], who showed that relevance correlates with students’ interest in the course within general contexts. The researchers highlighted that relevant examples provided by the teacher increase levels of interest, which can result in positive outcomes such as encouraging students to provide similar or counter examples, which result in more student–teacher interaction during sessions [
1,
70]. Finally, in addition to the studies that were conducted in the field of communication and humanities [
1,
60], the results showed that the relation between teacher self-disclosure, relevance, and emotional engagement, interest, is also applicable within the specific context of this study: STEM research programs.
Additionally, the results showed a negative relationship between relevance and two sub-constructs of emotional engagement: anxiety and frustration. This idea is supported by Myers et al. [
71], who argued that relevant instances of teacher self-disclosure are associated with more positive feelings of emotional engagement and less negative feelings of emotional engagement such as anxiety within the classroom context. The results support the idea that STEM students feel that less-relevant instances of teacher self-disclosure to the course content can cause more negative feelings of emotional engagement, ultimately impacting on their persistence within STEM disciplines.
The results also showed that one of the sub-dimensions of teacher self-disclosure, relevance, had a positive significant relation with two of the sub-constructs of behavioral engagement, which are diligence and attentiveness. When teachers share information that is applicable to the subject matter, students exhibit greater diligence, which is related to steady and energetic effort when working on classroom tasks. This increased diligence enhances their focus and task performance, and may contribute to their persistence within STEM programs. By incorporating relevant self-disclosure instances, teachers can foster an environment that cultivates student diligence, encourages active participation, and ultimately supports their long-term engagement and persistence in STEM education. The available literature supported claims about positive instances of teacher-self disclosure and behavioral engagement. For example, Imlawi and Gregg [
72] and Klem and Connell [
73,
74] argued that teacher self-disclosure instances that are positive and relevant in nature develop students’ classroom behavioral engagement that is linked to diligence and active participation during class. Furthermore, Kelly and Turner [
63], Marks [
75], Martin and Dowson [
76], and Ryan and Patrick [
77] suggested that students become behaviorally engaged, and more specifically attentive, when they receive instances of teacher self-disclosure that are relevant to the STEM content.
The study did not reveal any significant relationship between the dimensions of teacher self-disclosure amount and negativity, and the sub-construct of behavioral engagement diligence. Similarly, no significant relationship was observed between any of the dimensions of teacher self-disclosure and the sub-construct of behavioral engagement attentiveness. The available literature from the field of humanities and communications contradicts these findings, as Frisby et al. [
59] suggested that negative teacher self-disclosure instances can negatively affect students’ levels of behavioral engagement. Similarly, Myers and colleagues [
71] suggested that positive instances of teacher self-disclosure can positively affect students’ levels of behavioral engagement. There is a possibility that the specific study context, STEM research programs, might lead to these non-significant relations.
Implications
The findings of this study could serve as a basis for instructional design and curriculum development, especially within STEM higher education research programs. The findings might encourage higher education instructors or research mentors within STEM research programs and classes to include instructional methods focused on increasing classroom engagement through making strategic use of teacher self-disclosure. In addition, recommendations based on the results of this study can be used in different STEM research programs and classes as a guide to plan interventions and suitable trainings, professional development workshops, and ongoing seminars for professors, research mentors, and graduate assistants with the intention of supporting students’ levels of positive emotional and behavioral engagement.
Further, findings from this study provide guidance on considering the kind of teacher self-disclosure to implement within STEM research program classes, how often it should be used, and what instances of teacher self-disclosure are considered inappropriate and should be used less often. More specifically, considering the findings, several recommendations can be made. First, it appeared that relevant instances of teacher self-disclosure can positively contribute to maintaining students’ levels of classroom engagement—more specifically, emotional engagement interest and behavioral engagement diligence. Additionally, the obtained results also showed a negative relationship between relevance and emotional engagement, anxiety, and frustration. Hence, it can be recommended that STEM research mentors, STEM educators, doctoral assistants, and professional development programs make more useful and strategic use of instances of teacher self-disclosure that are relevant to the course content. As an outcome, this might support STEM students’ development of positive feelings during sessions such as increased interest, fewer feelings of anxiety and frustration, and being more diligent during classes.
5. Conclusions
This research study examined the relationship between teacher self-disclosure and emotional and behavioral engagement among students in a STEM research program. The results of the study showed a significant positive relation between teacher self-disclosure relevance and positive aspects of classroom engagement such as emotional engagement (interest) and behavioral engagement (diligence and attentiveness). The results also showed that there is a negative relation between teacher self-disclosure relevance and the emotional engagement factors of anxiety and frustration. Additionally, STEM students view that high amounts of teacher self-disclosure can be related to negative aspects of classroom engagement such as anxiety. The overall results showed that STEM students favor instances of teacher self-disclosure that are relevant and not too frequent, as such disclosure contributes positively to the development of students’ interest in the course content as well as supporting them to be more diligent and attentive during sessions.
The study was conducted with the intention of adding to the literature on an issue that tends to have limited studies that consider students in STEM in higher education, and, more specifically, in a STEM research program. The obtained results showed the type of teacher-self disclosure that can be used to increase students’ levels of classroom engagement. Moreover, the obtained results provided substantial evidence for the importance of strategically implementing relevant instances of teacher self-disclosure to promote classroom engagement within STEM classes.
Finally, this study’s results add to the available literature on teacher self-disclosure and classroom engagement, as most of the available studies focused on the context of humanities and not STEM education [
1,
78,
79]. Hence, this study’s focus in the field of STEM and the obtained results add significantly to the available literature, and motivate more research to be conducted on teacher self-disclosure and classroom engagement within the context of STEM education.