The Influence of Tutor Engagement, Attention, and Positive Emotions on Student Achievement

Reading is an essential skill learned in early elementary years. Phonological decoding, the ability to sound out written words, is central to the cognitive process of reading. Deficits in
phonological decoding can lead to low comprehension. Research shows that higher levels of attention, engagement, & positive emotions from teachers lead to better student outcomes. The present study explores the roles that tutor emotion, attention, & engagement play in aiding student phonological outcomes after reading intervention using facial expression analysis software, iMotions. iMotions was used to quantify rates of tutor engagement, attention, & emotion toward a student across four tutoring sessions. We explored how prevalent tutor attention, engagement, & emotions are and how all variables are related. Student phonological decoding ability was measured before and after tutoring. As engagement requires active participation beyond attention, we hypothesized that tutor engagement, not attention, during a reading intervention would be positively associated with reading outcomes. Results indicated that tutors exhibited attention for a higher percentage of time than engagement across all tutoring sessions (80.6% and 43.6%, respectively). Attention and engagement were not significantly correlated (p = .675), corroborating the notion that the two are unique measures of tutor involvement. While students’ phonological decoding skills improved after tutoring, the change in
scores was not associated with rates of tutor engagement.