A Study of Effects of Teaching Styles on Student Engagement: Evidence from E-learning

The purpose of this paper is to provide new insights into the effects of teaching manners on student engagement in e-learning, a topic of great interest in the academic literature over the past several years. To this end, this paper develops the model of a structural equation for e-student engagement on the footing of teaching styles, internal and external motives, and the self-determination theory. This paper solves the equation via resorting to AMOS. The empirical analysis is conducted among a sample of 3090 students in e-education. The paper finds that the autonomy-supportive teaching style exercises a positive effect on learning engagement, the path coefficient reaching 0.21, and meanwhile exerts a significant impact on perceived autonomy, perceived competence and perceived relatedness in intrinsic motivation, the path coefficient reaching 0.39, 0.29 and 0.27, separately. Notwithstanding having no significant influence on student engagement due to the value for P standing at 0.574 exceeding 0.10, controlling instruction turns out to be a contributor of external and internal regulation. Perceived autonomy, perceived competence and perceived relatedness perform a mediating function on the nexus between the autonomy-supportive schooling vein and student engagement. Our results thus call for feasible proposals improving the e-learning environment including cultivating the source of internal motivation, providing an online area where the value of a task or event is expounded, adopting abundant, non-controlling languages, and recognizing the negative sentiment of learners. This paper also formulates a framework concerning the designing of the e-learning space for student engagement expansion. This paper concludes with pointing out limitations and researching areas in the future.