Exploring the antecedents of boredom: Do teachers know why students are bored?

In the current study, researchers explored if teachers can identify antecedents of students' boredom. First, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to 111 9th-grade students to explore their self-reported causes of boredom. Next, semi-structured interviews with 117 9th-grade teachers were used to examine the factors that teachers think make their students bored. Also, quantitative questions gauged teachers' agreement with students' responses. Our results revealed a high congruency as teachers identified most of the antecedents of boredom named by students. One notable incongruity, however, was that teachers did not mention themselves as antecedents of boredom unless they were explicitly asked about it.