Relationship between negative teacher behaviors and student engagement: Evidence from India

While positive teacher behavior is known to promote student engagement, the impact of negative teacher behavior, especially in public schools in developing countries, has not been explored in the literature so far. Through structural equation modeling of 3108 student responses (52% girls), belonging to different social groups, collected at two time points one year apart, we found that student engagement is negatively correlated with negative teacher behavior. The results also indicated that the relationship is mediated by student cognitive and metacognitive self-regulating strategies. Mastery goal orientation moderated the relationship. The research shows that the curriculum of teacher training programs must include sensitization about the impact of negative teacher behavior on student learning in general, and student engagement in particular.