Engaging students: The role of teacher beliefs and interpersonal teacher behavior in fostering student engagement in vocational education

Student engagement is an important precursor for learning. In this study we used teacher (N = 200) and student (N = 2288) questionnaires to investigate whether perceived interpersonal teacher behavior and teacher beliefs concerning motives for being a teacher, attitudes toward teacher knowledge domains and self-efficacy for teaching are related to self-reported student engagement. Three components of engagement were distinguished: behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement. The strongest relations were found between the two dimensions of interpersonal teacher behavior and the three components of student engagement. Remarkably, there was a relation of almost zero (0.01) between students' age and their engagement.