The Teacher Benefits From Giving Autonomy Support During Physical Education Instruction

Abstract

Recognizing that students benefit when they receive autonomy-supportive teaching, the current study tested the parallel hypothesis that teachers themselves would benefit from giving autonomy support. Twenty-seven elementary, middle, and high school physical education teachers (20 males, 7 females) were randomly assigned either to participate in an autonomy-supportive intervention program (experimental group) or to teach their physical education course with their existing style (control group) within a three-wave longitudinal research design. Manipulation checks showed that the intervention was successful, as students perceived and raters scored teachers in the experimental group as displaying a more autonomy-supportive and less controlling motivating style. In the main analyses, ANCOVA-based repeated-measures analyses showed large and consistent benefits for teachers in the experimental group, including greater teaching motivation (psychological need satisfaction, autonomous motivation, and intrinsic goals), teaching skill (teaching efficacy), and teaching well-being (vitality, job satisfaction, and lesser emotional and physical exhaustion). These findings show that giving autonomy support benefits teachers in much the same way that receiving it benefits their students.

Autonomy-Supportive Teaching: What It Is, How to Do It

“…First, teacher-provided autonomy support benefi ts students in very important ways. Students who are randomly assigned to receive autonomy support from their teachers, compared to those who are not (students in a control group), experience higher-quality motivation and display markedly more positive classroom functioning and educational outcomes, including more need satisfaction, greater autonomous motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, identifi ed regulation), greater classroom engagement, higher-quality learning, a preference for optimal challenge, enhanced psychological and physical well-being, and higher academic achievement (Cheon & Reeve, 2013Cheon, Reeve, & Moon, 2012 ;Cheon, Reeve, Yu, & Jang, 2014 ;Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004 ;Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, & Deci, 2004 ;Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Soenens, & Matos, 2005 ;Vansteenkiste, Simons, Soenens, & Lens, 2004 ). The general conclusion from these experimental studies is that students benefi t from receiving autonomy support, and they benefi t in ways that are widespread and educationally important, even vital.…”

Youth Sport Coaches’ Well-Being Across the Season: The Psychological Costs and Benefits of Giving Empowering and Disempowering Sports Coaching to Athletes

“…While previous research has mostly focused on the process of altering coaches' behaviors to improve athletes' psychosocial outcomes (Langan, Blake, & Lonsdale, 2013), this study, along with recent SDT-based research (Cheon et al, 2014;Solstad et al, 2015), indicate that future CDPs should also emphasize the intrinsic value of giving empowering sports coaching to athletes for coaches themselves. Importantly, considering the hustle and bustle of everyday life and the voluntary nature of youth sports coaching (Baklien, Ytterhus, & Bongaardt, 2015;Langan et al, 2013), it seems safe to argue that many coaches who attend coach education may be doing so because they feel obliged to do so.…”

“…Another explanation might be that the giving of empowering sports coaching, such as giving autonomy-support, social-support, and emphasizing criteria for mastery that are personally controllable, are all expressions of helping behaviors (Martela & Ryan, 2015Weinstein & Ryan, 2010) that benefit not only the receiver, but the giver as well (Deci et al, 2006). Indeed, such behaviors, indicative of empathetic, prosocial acts, have been shown to be positively related to basic needs satisfaction (Cheon et al, 2014;Solstad et al, 2015).…”

Social-contextual and intrapersonal antecedents of coaches' basic need satisfaction: The intervening variable effect of providing autonomy-supportive coaching

“…For example, provision of autonomy support has been found to be positively associated with better relational functioning (Patrick, Knee Canevello, & Lonsbary, 2007), greater job satisfaction (Cheon, Reeve, Yu, & Jang, 2014), and basic psychological need satisfaction . The sport psychology literature is replete with models testing athletes' perceptions of coaches' autonomy-supportive behaviors (e.g., Balaguer et al, 2012;Jõesaar et al, 2012) as well as models testing antecedents of coaches' selfreported use of an ASC style in the sport context (e.g., Stebbings, Taylor, Spray, & Ntoumanis, 2012).…”