Abstract:

The existence of virtual, interactive and experiential student-focused didactic projects in several countries evidences that the identification of their factors for success is a very interesting question. Despite the widespread growth of interest in the analysis of academic programs and syllabuses in Europe and America, the behavior of professors and students is very different among several regions. From a local territorial perspective, the analysis of the professors’ motivations in the context of happiness in the classroom provides a relevant vision to characterize this non-homogeneous spatial distribution, and it is a relevant perspective in order to promote this type of teaching in the classroom.

The objectives of this work are the following:
1) to conceptualize the satisfaction and happiness at universities as a set of attributes providing positive emotions in the classroom; and
2) to evidence empirically the factors for success of these behaviors in several institutions of the Spanish and Mexican geographies.

The methodology of this research presents a bibliographic review of those constructs and several in-depth interviews were applied to a diverse sample of professors, in terms of their perceptions related to the best way to implement their practices in the classroom.

This study reinforces the importance to manage several factors for success in the classroom and presents a proposal of indicators to promote happiness and satisfaction to different levels of management. To sum up, this research describes a systematic scheme to promote this type of behavior in order to reduce the uncertainty involved in new academic development projects in learning and teaching or the revitalization of existing ones. The conclusion of this research is relevant in decisions of educational policy, but also on the teaching practice and theory in the scope of this study.

The description of this paper is the following. The first section includes the introduction and motivations to base this research. Second, we review the theoretical and empirical background on practices and approaches to happiness in the classroom, satisfaction and perceptions, in particular on leadership styles in teaching in Higher Education. Third, a parsimonious and systematic process to measure happiness in the classroom and satisfaction is presented in this research and we elaborate a simple methodology to collect and analyze our data. Fourth, an integrative analysis and discussion of the results in terms of perceptions of professors were carried out. Finally, the last section is focused on the conclusions, management implications in the classroom and future research.

Keywords:

Teaching style, learning, happiness, classroom, Higher Education.