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Research consistently shows that the learning environment plays an important role for early adolescents' learning and outcomes and suggests that good teacher-student relationships can serve as a protective factor for maintaining young adolescents' interest and active engagement in learning. However, less is known about the dynamic nature of teacher-student relationships and how they link with academic motivation development. Furthermore, little is known about the nature and the effects of teacher-student relationships in a cross-national context. The present study investigated changes in two components of teacher-student relationships (teachers' involvement vs. rejection) and examined links with students' academic motivation during the first grade of secondary school. Ten Dutch and ten Indonesian teachers (65 % female) from 24 classes were videoed 12 times across the school year, and four videos for each class were selected randomly and coded on teachers' involvement versus rejection. A total of 713 students (52 % girls) completed four-wave measures of their academic motivation after each video observation. Multilevel growth curve modeling revealed that the teacher's involvement changed in a curvilinear way and decreased across the first year of secondary education, while changes in the teacher's rejection did not follow a linear time function. Academic motivation changed in an undesirable way: controlled motivation increased, while autonomous motivation decreased over time. Teachers' involvement had a unique contribution in preventing high levels of controlled motivation in both countries. Findings suggest that teacher-student relationships (teachers' involvement) play an essential role in early adolescents' motivation regardless of the nations and should be a priority for schools.

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Teachers’ behavior is a key factor that influences students’ motivation. Many theoretical models have tried to explain this influence, with one of the most thoroughly researched being self-determination theory (SDT). We used a Delphi method to create a classification of teacher behaviors consistent with SDT. This is useful because SDT-based interventions have been widely used to improve educational outcomes. However, these interventions contain many components. Reliably classifying and labeling those components is essential for implementation, reproducibility, and evidence synthesis. We used an international expert panel (N = 34) to develop this classification system. We started by identifying behaviors from existing literature, then refined labels, descriptions, and examples using the Delphi panel’s input. Next, the panel of experts iteratively rated the relevance of each behavior to SDT, the psychological need that each behavior influenced, and its likely effect on motivation. To create a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of behaviors, experts nominated overlapping behaviors that were redundant, and suggested new ones missing from the classification. After three rounds, the expert panel agreed upon 57 teacher motivational behaviors (TMBs) that were consistent with SDT. For most behaviors (77%), experts reached consensus on both the most relevant psychological need and influence on motivation. Our classification system provides a comprehensive list of TMBs and consistent terminology in how those behaviors are labeled. Researchers and practitioners designing interventions could use these behaviors to design interventions, to reproduce interventions, to assess whether these behaviors moderate intervention effects, and could focus new research on areas where experts disagreed.

For many early adolescent students, motivation for school declines after their transition to secondary education. Increasingly, the decisive importance of teachers in shaping early adolescents' motivation is stressed; thus far, however, both longitudinal and observational studies on this topic have been scarce. The present study investigated how early adolescents' interactions with their maths teachers were associated with the development of their motivation for maths. In line with self-determination theory, videotaped teacher-student interactions were coded in terms of their being supportive or thwarting of the three fundamental human needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, i.e. in terms of their providing autonomy support, structure, and involvement. To assess need-supportive teaching, at four measurement time-points equally spread over the first year of secondary education, video analysis was conducted of, in total, 137 complete maths lessons in 20 maths classes (40% female teachers). To assess developments in motivation at each of the four measurement time-points, questionnaires were distributed to the 489 students (aged 12-13; 49.9% girls) in the 20 maths classes. Multilevel analysis did not indicate associations of autonomy-supportive teaching with any of the four motivational constructs incorporated in the study (autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, amotivation, and performance avoidance). For structure, associations in expected directions were found with autonomous motivation (positive) and amotivation (negative), but not with the other two motivational constructs. For teacher involvement, associations in the expected direction were found with all four motivational constructs. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for research and educational practice.