ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1613073
The Role of Teachers' Emotional Facial Expressions on Student Perceptions and Engagement for Primary School Students -An Experimental Investigation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Suceava, Romania
- 2University of Life Sciences King Mihai I Timișoara, Timisoara, Romania
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
There is a saying that says that "A teacher's heart shapes a student's mind." This study aimed to investigate the impact of teachers' facial emotional displays (joy, neutrality, anger, and fear) on students' perceptions, compliance, and motivation. Using an experimental design, data were collected from 121 students aged 9 to 12, (M = 10.3, SD = 0.78), from schools in Suceava, Romania. Participants were exposed to vignettes featuring teachers displaying different emotional expressions, and they completed questionnaires to assess their responses. The intergroup comparisons revealed that joy had the most significant positive impact on students' willingness to participate, respect for the teacher, and overall enjoyment, while fear and anger led to negative outcomes. The findings encourage the positive emotional expressions in fostering better studentteacher relationships and improving classroom engagement.
Keywords: Emotional display, Teacher's emotions, students' perceptions, experimental design, facial expressions Font: Italic Formatted: Font: Italic
Received: 16 Apr 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Marius, Iasmina and Cornelia Diana. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marin Cornelia Diana, University of Life Sciences King Mihai I Timișoara, Timisoara, Romania
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.