Understanding the interplay between teacher self-efficacy, teacher–student interactions, and students’ self-regulated learning skills at different levels of classroom ecology

Introduction Studies pinpoint the importance of exploring factors in the classroom environment that might foster students’ SRL-skills in various domains. This study explored specific teacher and classroom factors, including self-efficacy for SRL-skills (TSE) and teacher–student interactions in relation to students’ self-regulated learning skills in various domains (metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral). Additionally, the moderating role of teacher–student interactions in the relationship between TSE and SRL-skills was examined. Methods Third-to sixth grade students ( N = 1,278, 46.9% boys) from 63 classrooms of Dutch elementary schools completed reports about their metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral SRL-skills. Teachers reported on their TSE for eight randomly selected students from their classes. In addition, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System was used to observe the quality of teacher–student interactions. Results Multilevel analyses generally revealed that individual students reported better metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral SRL-skills when their teachers felt efficacious in teaching SRL-skills. However, none of the associations at the class level were significant. Moreover, when high-quality teacher–student interactions were observed, students reported lower levels of metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral SRL-skills. No moderating effect of teacher–student interactions on the relation between TSE and SRL-skills was found. Discussion These findings show that specific measures of TSE at the appropriate level of analysis may help to better explain variation in TSE and students’ SRL-skills.