Catching the spark: The role of electrodermal activity in understanding teacher enthusiasm and students' lesson enjoyment

Abstract Process‐oriented approaches are needed to understand the temporality and dynamics of teacher–student interactions in higher education classrooms. In this study, we follow a complexity science approach, based on non‐linear intra‐ and inter‐personal physiology methods, to explore the physiology of teacher–student interactions. In particular, we examine the relationship between higher education students' course interest, electrodermal activity (EDA, as an indicator of physiological arousal), perceived teacher enthusiasm in the classroom and lesson enjoyment. Ten higher education teachers and 42 of their students voluntarily participated in this study. Self‐reported measures were applied to assess students' course interest (pre), perceived teacher enthusiasm (post) and lesson enjoyment (post) in authentic higher education lectures. Teachers' and students' EDA was sampled at 2 kHz using Bionomadix mobile sensors during the lectures. Auto‐ and cross‐recurrence quantification analyses were applied to understand the temporal structures of students' individual EDA patterns and their physiological synchrony with their teachers. At the individual level, entropy of students' EDA predicted their perceived teacher enthusiasm and lesson enjoyment beyond course interest. At the physiological synchrony level, course interest was the only predictor of students' perceived teacher enthusiasm and lesson enjoyment. Moreover, our findings showed that the relationships between course interest and the structure of EDA patterns differ between individual and physiological synchrony levels. These results provide valuable insight into understanding interactions between teachers and students from a complexity science perspective. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic? Control value theory (CVT) defines academic emotions in terms of the two dimensions of valence (positive or negative) and arousal (activating or deactivating). Enjoyment is considered a positive activating emotion that is central to effective teaching and learning. Emotions in the classroom are dynamically co‐constructed through social interactions among teachers and students. While valence is inherently subjective, objective physiological measures like electrodermal activity (EDA) are increasingly utilised to understand the arousal dimension of emotions and the dynamics of emotional contagion between teachers and students. What this paper adds? Observing EDA of higher education students during authentic lectures can provide valuable insights into their perceived teacher enthusiasm and lesson enjoyment. Exploring the temporal structures of EDA through nonlinear methods might help understand the emergence of students' lesson enjoyment in a bottom‐up manner. Studying temporal structures of EDA at intra‐ and interpersonal levels (i.e. teacher–student physiological synchrony) can provide a multilayered perspective on the relationship between students' course interest, perceived teacher enthusiasm and lesson enjoyment. At the intra‐personal level, students' course interest and their EDA entropy both predict perceived teacher enthusiasm and lesson enjoyment. At the inter‐personal level, teacher–student physiological synchrony occurs above chance level. Furthermore, physiological synchrony is associated with students' course interest. However, it does not predict perceived teacher enthusiasm or lesson enjoyment beyond the influence of course interest. Implications for practice and/or policy Teachers and learning designers can focus on fostering high course interest among learners at the beginning of their courses to facilitate positive relational dynamics with the students. Moving educational research towards non‐linear approaches can provide more nuanced insights into how students' and teachers' emotions evolve in higher education classrooms.