Students are both producers and consumers of persuasion in the classroom. As message producers they enact compliance-seeking strategies to persuade teachers to comply with their requests, but as consumers of persuasion they receive requests from teachers that they may or may not follow. Students enact a variety of strategies to resist complying with teachers' requests, classroom norms, and school policies. This chapter explores the various motivators and consequences of students resisting compliance in the classroom and how these behaviors result in incivility, misbehaviors, annoyances, distractions, disrespect, and even student-to-teacher bullying. The chapter further considers the impact student resistance has on teacher-student interactions and the holistic learning experience.
TopEngagement And Amotivation
As classroom managers (Christofferson & Sullivan, 2015; Evertson & Weinsten, 2006; Stronge, War, & Grant, 2011), teachers strive to engage their students and spark a zest for learning and classroom participation. From an academic stance, engagement refers to the extent that students participate in academic and nonacademic school activities, feel connected to the school, and value the goals of education (Li & Lerner, 2011); in essence, engagement refers to students’ active involvement in learning activities (Christenson, Reschly, & Wylie, 2012). Academic engagement is further conceptualized as a multidimensional construct comprised of behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic components. Behavioral engagement concerns involvement in academic activities and school-based social activities, as well as positive conduct, and the absence of disruptive behaviors, while emotional engagement considers favorable emotional reactions to the school, teacher, and schoolmates (Li & Lerner, 2011). Cognitive engagement refers to students’ strategic learning, where the student endears sophisticated rather than superficial learning strategies; and agentic engagement involves students proactively contributing to the flow of instruction by informing the teacher of what interests them and what they need and want to be enlightened learners (Christenson et al., 2012). Engagement is a critical factor in promoting student academic achievement (Li & Lerner, 2011), and a lack of engagement is interrelated to increased academic failure (Johnson, McGue, & Iacono, 2006), higher dropout rates (Alexander, Entwisle, & Horsey, 1997), depression, delinquency, and substance use (Li & Lerner, 2011). Previous research has noted that teachers play integral roles in either maximizing or minimizing academic engagement, whereby adolescents are more behaviorally engaged in school when they have more highly supportive, affiliative teacher-student relationships; in contrast, average or low levels of teacher-student affiliation result in less behavioral engagement (De Laet et al., 2016).