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Educators are commonly concerned about how to trigger students' interest in the classroom, as well as how to create a learning experience in which students are engaged and motivated to invest effort and time. Similarly, researchers have explored these variables and aimed to establish a better understanding of how students' interest is developed. Yet, less attention has been paid to teacher self-disclosure as a factor in students' learning experiences and interest development. Although teacher self-disclosure has commonly been addressed in connection with the teacher-student relationship it has not been linked to interest development. Therefore, with the goal of exploring the construct of teacher self-disclosure, this study explored associations and interactions of perceptions of teacher self-disclosure and of students' individual and situational interest in a language learning context. In addition, students' ratings of the learning experience and intended effort were added to investigate associations between these student variables and their perceptions of teacher self-disclosure and interest. Data were collected in language classes of 16 different instructors. In total, 185 students participated in the qualitative part of the study, Phase 1, by filling out surveys at the beginning and end of the semester. For the main analysis, correlation and regression analyses were used in order to explore the relations between students' perceptions of teacher self-disclosure and initial individual interest, situational interest, the learning experience, and intended effort. Further, a total of nine instructors and eight students participated in the qualitative part, Phase 2, by agreeing to be observed and interviewed. Here, the focus was on describing and assessing the use of teacher self-disclosure in language classes. Results indicated that teachers were rated as varying in their self-disclosure, but that self-disclosure did not account for much of the variance in students' situational interest. Qualitative results showed that students perceived teacher self-disclosure to be an important communication strategy and one of the influential variables an instructor can bring into the learning experience. Overall, this study makes a contribution to understanding the complexity and interactions of student and teacher variables that are crucial to establish a functioning student-teacher relationship and subsequently healthy learning experience. / text

Combined with advancements in technology, prior research investigating the teacher-student relationship has radically changed the way we teach and learn in online education. This study examined the way teacher self-disclosure (TSD) influenced student motivation to enroll in an online course and altered their affect, or feelings, toward the teacher when applied within a purely online learning setting. The experiment took place online and was built within a Boston University’s learning management system (LMS), Blackboard Learn. In the online environment, TSD was controlled to provide high levels of male and female TSD in two treatment groups and a complete absence of TSD in two control groups. Out of the 336 Master of Social Work (MSW) students that responded to the recruitment email, 84 students were placed in one of four online settings led by fictional male and female teachers. Students in the treatment groups were granted access to male or female TSD via a Meet the Professor tab within the online learning environment. This tab provided students with access to content collected from social media websites, such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter on a single web page. The social media content displayed personal and professional information about these fictional instructors and were used to create TSD in the sample online course. The study participants were instructed to explore their assigned sample course not including (control) or including (treatment) TSD. Before and after exploring the sample course, participants completed pre- and post-surveys measuring their motivation to engage in the online course materials, their affect toward the teacher (ATT), and their perceptions of TSD within the online learning environment. Hypothesis testing using ANCOVA, correlation, t-test, and Chi-squared procedures revealed no statistical significance. Findings include recommendations for methodological requirement need to explore the complexities of the teacher-student relationship within a purely online learning environment.