I think I can engage my students. Teachers' perceptions of student engagement and their beliefs about being a teacher

Student engagement is an important condition for positive outcomes at school. This study examined whether teachers' motives for being a teacher, their ratings of the relative importance of different teacher competences, their self-efficacy for teaching, and ratings of their own interpersonal teacher behavior could predict teacher perceptions of student engagement. Relations between perceived student engagement and teacher beliefs were explored using data from a survey of 195 teachers in prevocational and vocational education in the Netherlands. Teachers rating themselves higher on dimensions of interpersonal teacher behavior, importance of didactic and pedagogical competence, and self-efficacy perceived their students as more engaged. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.