Differentiated need support by teachers: Student‐specific provision of autonomy and structure and relations with student motivation

Abstract

Background. According to self-determination theory, teachers can support their students' engagement in learning by providing autonomy support and structure. Within classes, however, there appears to be great diversity in the extent to which students experience autonomy and structure.Aims. This study aimed to investigate the degree to which teachers' perceptions of student-specific autonomy support and structure differ between students in their class and whether differentiated need support predicts students' motivation.Sample. Twenty-four elementary school teachers and their students (n = 506) participated in this study.Method. Teachers completed a short questionnaire assessing their perceptions of autonomy support and structure for each student. Students completed two questionnaires assessing perceptions of need support and their motivation. Multilevel analyses were conducted.Results. The results showed that the within-classroom variation in both teacher perceptions and student perceptions of need support was considerably larger than the between-classroom variation. Teacher perceptions of student-specific autonomy support were positively associated with students' autonomous motivation and negatively with students' controlled motivation. However, teacher perceptions of student-specific structure were positively associated with students' controlled motivation.Conclusions. These findings suggest that teachers differentiate in need support. The positive association between teacher perceptions of structure and students' controlled motivation might suggest that teachers may offer structure in controlling rather than autonomy-supportive ways. Furthermore, the relations between need support and students' motivation differed between the class-level and the within-class (student) level highlighting the need for disentangling the effects of need-supportive teaching at different levels and adopting a multilevel approach.

Patterns of motivating teaching behaviour and student engagement: a microanalytic approach

“…Recently, there has been a shift from this trait-like perspective on teaching styles to a more fine-grained approach that suggests teachers to alternate between motivating and demotivating behaviours between lessons-and even, within the course of a single lesson (Aelterman et al, 2019;Amoura et al, 2015). Research has shown that, indeed, teachers apply different (de)motivating teaching behaviours, depending on (1) the stage of a lesson (Cents-Boonstra et al, submitted;Haerens et al, 2013;Van den Berghe et al, 2015), (2) their perception of the differences in students' needs and motivation (Domen et al, 2019;Hornstra et al, 2015), and (3) the educational context (Assor et al, 2002). Assor et al (2002), in addition, showed that the effectiveness of motivating behaviours varied across lessons.…”

“…For instance, when students do not respond to teachers' motivating way to call students to account, teachers start calling students to account in a more controlling way, probably to get students back in line. Prior research has revealed that there is a substantial number of teachers who believe that the use of motivating teaching behaviours is more challenging and time-consuming (Aelterman et al, 2014), or that their effectiveness is dependent on their perception of the abilities and motivation of the individual students (Domen et al, 2019). This may indicate that teachers combine both behaviours, either because they believe they will get the desired reaction quicker, or that combining these behaviours will engage a larger group of students.…”

“…However, recent SDT research suggests that motivating teaching is situation-dependent, and dynamically manifested in moment-to-moment teaching behaviours (Aelterman et al, 2019;Domen et al, 2019). In the current study, a microanalytic approach was applied to extend previous SDT-related work, and to offer new insights into the dynamics of motivating teaching behaviours and students' engagement within everyday classroom interactions.…”

Comparison of rain classroom teaching and traditional teaching methods in teaching undergraduate nursing students of stomatology

“…After class, frontier knowledge can be expanded, and the knowledge learned can be consolidated. Teachers can support students ' participatory learning by providing guiding support and conditions that are conducive for learning [19].…”

Teacher expectation effects on need-supportive teaching, student motivation, and engagement: a self-determination perspective

“…In addition, prior SDT research suggested substantial differences between students in the levels of need-supportive teaching they received (e.g., Domen, Hornstra, Weijers, Van der Veen, & Peetsma, 2018;Reeve, 2009). Specifically, studies that have examined the distribution of variance in student perceptions of need-supportive teaching have indicated that teachers differentiate between students; that is, class-level intraclass correlations (ICCs) of student perceptions of need-supportive teaching have been found to vary from .05 to .31 (Bieg, Backes, & Mittag, 2011;Danielsen, Wiium, Wilhemsen, & Wold, 2010;Hospel & Galand, 2016) and from .24 to .31 for teachers' student-specific perceptions of need-supportive teaching (Domen et al, 2018). These results indicate that most variance in these variables is situated within classes rather than between classes.…”