The relationship between teaching styles of faculty members and students' academic enthusiasm and academic performance

In programing to increase the quality of education, paying attention to teaching styles has been identified as an important variable. One of the most important reasons is that students' learning is a reflection of the experiences they face in the classroom. So, teaching styles serve as an important function in the classroom. The five dimensions of the Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Styles are: (a) Expert Teaching Style: possess knowledge and expertise that students need. Strives to maintain status an expert among students by displaying detailed knowledge and by challenging students to enhance their competence. (b) Formal Authority Teaching Style: Possess status among students because of knowledge and role as a faculty member. Concerned with providing positive and negative feedback, establishing learning goals, exceptions, and rules of conduct for students. (c) Personal Model Teaching Style: Believes in “teaching by personal example” and establishes a prototype for how to think and behave. (d) Facilitator Teaching Style: emphasizes the personal nature of teacher-student interactions. Guides students by asking questions, exploring options, suggesting alternatives, and encouraging them to develop criteria to make informed choices. And (e) Delegator Teaching Style: concerned with developing students’ capacity to function autonomously. Students work independently on projects or as part of autonomous teams.According to the importance of teaching styles, this research was conducted with the aim of investigating the relationship between professors' teaching styles and students' academic enthusiasm and academic performance. The present research method was descriptive-correlation. The statistical population was the students of Tehran universities, 238 students were selected by random sampling method. The information was collected by using a questionnaire. The main tool for data collection was the Grasha-Reichmann (1996) teaching style questionnaire and the Fredericks, Blumanfield and Paris (2004) academic enthusiasm questionnaire. The Grasha-Reichmann teaching style questionnaire is a self-reporting tool containing the five different teaching styles including: expert teaching style (8 items), formal authority teaching style (8 items), personal model teaching style (8 items), facilitator teaching style (8 items), and delegator teaching style (8 items). In other words, each item on a 5-point Likert scale. Fredericks, Blumanfield and Paris (2004) scale measures behavioral, emotional and cognitive subscales among students, using 5-point Likert scale. Fredericks et al. reported the reliability coefficient of this scale as 0.86. Also, to measure the students' academic performance, their GPA was used. Cronbach's alpha method was conducted to determine the validity of the tools. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, by using SPSS software version 24.The finding revealed that the mean for cognitive academic enthusiasm was 17.15 (out of 25). Also, the mean for emotional and behavioral academic enthusiasm were 22.89 (out of 30) and 14.97 (out of 20), respectively. In addition, students GPA was 16.98 (of 20). As stated above, students’ views on teaching styles were assesses on five dimensions, including: Expert Teaching Style, Formal Authority Teaching Style, Personal Model Teaching Style, Facilitator Teaching Style, and Delegator Teaching Style. The mean of view on expert style was 32.69 (out of 40). Also, the mean of view on formal authority style, personal model style, facilitator style, and delegator style were 29.06, 31.66, 25.87, and 25.21, respectively. Analysis of the findings showed that there was a direct and meaningful correlation between the teaching styles of professors and the academic enthusiasm of students. Also, there was a direct (positive) and meaningful correlation between professors' teaching styles and students' academic performance. Path analysis showed that of different teaching styles, facilitator teaching style had the most effect of academic performance of students. About the effect of teaching styles on academic enthusiasm, Personal Model Teaching Style had the most effect on behavioral academic enthusiasm. Also, Facilitator Teaching Style had the most effect on emotional and cognitive academic enthusiasm. Finally, about the effect of academic enthusiasm on academic performance, according to the coefficients, emotional academic enthusiasm had the most effect on academic performance of students. After that, there were behavioral and cognitive academic enthusiasm, respectively.According to the findings, it is suggested that faculty members use challenging and up-to-date activities similar to the real environment to increase students' academic enthusiasm. Also, it is suggested that faculty members, by focusing on new teaching styles that affect students' enthusiasm and academic performance, move away from focusing on the traditional style of lectures. So, they can increase the effective learning level by participating students in classroom teaching.