Enjoying working and learning in vocational education: a multilevel investigation of emotional crossover and contextual moderators

Abstract Background Students’ positive emotions, such as enjoying learning activities at school, are increasingly recognized as being conducive to learning. Researchers therefore seek to understand the roles that teachers’ emotions and instructional behaviours play for promoting activity-related enjoyment among their students. This study is the first to investigate emotional crossover in vocational classrooms, combining Control-Value Theory and Broaden-and-Built Theory to substantiate potentially mediating teaching characteristics (clarity and support, enthusiastic teaching, application-orientation). Moreover, this study explores contextual moderators of crossover by comparing different types of training (classes in dual and in school-based training programs) as well as different domains of training (commercial, technical, and social occupations). Methods Survey data were gathered from 77 teachers and 1522 students with a temporal distance of about 5 months, covering a considerable period of instructional interaction. Data were examined with multilevel latent contextual models, which allow controlling for measurement and sampling errors as well as for potential confounders when testing mediation and moderated mediation in nested data structures. Results and conclusions Mediation analysis for the full sample indicates substantial positive relations between (a) teachers’ work enjoyment and teaching characteristics, and between (b) teaching characteristics and students’ enjoyment of lessons. Still, crossover of activity-related emotions cannot be empirically established. Moderator analyses reveal that crossover occurrence is not a function of training type. However, positive relations between teaching characteristics and students’ enjoyment vary in strength across the three contrasted vocational domains, and the same applies to positive associations between teachers’ enjoyment and teaching characteristics. Consequently, crossover effects are demonstrable only in commercial classes. The paper therefore discusses methodological issues, further research needs and practical implications.