Are both classroom autonomy support and structure equally important for students' engagement? A multilevel analysis

The current study was carried out within the framework of self-determination theory and aimed to investigate specific, additive and combined effects of teachers' autonomy support and structure on students' engagement. Using multilevel analyses, main effects and interaction of autonomy support and structure provided at the classroom level were tested on behavioral, cognitive and emotional engagement. 744 ninth grade students from 51 classes completed a questionnaire about their engagement during language classes and their perceptions of the teacher's provision of autonomy support and structure. The results highlight the links between classroom context, especially structure, and the three components of engagement. Autonomy support has a complementary role as it was associated with emotional engagement. These results improve our understanding of the relationships between learning environment and engagement and provide more accurate indications to teachers and educators regarding the most effective ways to enhance students' engagement.     

Perceived autonomy support,intrinsic motivation,and student ratings of instruction

Motivation theory suggests that autonomy supportiveness in instruction often leads to many positive outcomes in the classroom, such as higher levels of intrinsic motivation and engagement. The purpose of this study was to determine whether perceived autonomy support and course-related intrinsic motivation in college classrooms positively predict student ratings of instruction. Data were collected from 47 undergraduate education courses and 914 students. Consistent with expectations, the results indicated that both intrinsic motivation and autonomy support were positively associated with multiple dimensions of student ratings of instruction. Results also showed that intrinsic motivation moderated the association between autonomy support and instructional ratings—the higher intrinsic motivation, the less predictive autonomy support, and the lower intrinsic motivation, the more predictive autonomy support. These results suggest that incorporating classroom activities that engender autonomy support may lead to improved student perceptions of classroom instruction and may also enhance both student motivation and learning.     

The defining features of teacher talk within autonomy-supportive classroom management

Classroom management practices were studied in middle school classrooms with positive interpersonal classroom climates, high levels of student engagement, and high levels of autonomy support. Students' motivational responses to autonomy-supportive instructional interactions were explored to understand variability within classroom management practices identified and described in this study as providing autonomy support. Our findings suggest proactive classroom management is enacted through instructional interactions wherein teachers scaffold students' autonomous self-regulatory capacities that sustain student engagement in classroom activities by supporting students' strategy use, transferring responsibility to students, encouraging students' to structure physical and social contexts to support learning, and promoting prosocial behavior.     

Linking teacher self-efficacy and responsibility with teachers’ self-reported and student-reported motivating styles and student engagement

Teachers' motivational beliefs—i.e., teachers' self-efficacy and felt responsibility for educational outcomes—can shape their professional decision-making and approaches to teaching. However, theorized associations with student outcomes remain elusive. In a multi-level analysis with 96 Swiss vocational teachers and their 1300 students, we examined the interrelations between teachers' self-efficacy, responsibility, teacher- and student-reported autonomy-supportive versus psychologically controlling teaching, and student motivation (emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement). Teachers' motivational beliefs predicted their endorsement of autonomy-supportive teaching, which in turn predicted student-reported autonomy support. Student-reported autonomy support was a powerful predictor of student engagement. Teachers’ motivational beliefs did not predict student-reported instructional practices and engagement directly, and indirect effects via teacher- and student-reported autonomy support were small. Teacher- and student-reported controlling practices were not significantly correlated. The degree of (mis)alignment of teacher- and student-reported instructional practices is a key ingredient in understanding the often missing link between teacher motivation and student outcomes.     

How teacher emotional support motivates students: The mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness,autonomy support,and competence

Multilevel mediation analyses test whether students' mid-year reports of classroom experiences of autonomy, relatedness with peers, and competence mediate associations between early in the school year emotionally-supportive teacher-student interactions (independently observed) and student-reported academic year changes in mastery motivation and behavioral engagement. When teachers were observed to be more emotionally-supportive in the beginning of the school year, adolescents reported academic year increases in their behavioral engagement and mastery motivation. Mid-year student reports indicated that in emotionally-supportive classrooms, adolescents experienced more developmentally-appropriate opportunities to exercise autonomy in their day-to-day activities and had more positive relationships with their peers. Analyses of the indirect effects of teacher emotional support on students' engagement and motivation indicated significant mediating effects of autonomy and peer relatedness experiences, but not competence beliefs, in this sample of 960 students (ages 11–17) in the classrooms of 68 middle and high school teachers in 12 U.S. schools.     

Teachers' learning to facilitate high‐level student thinking: Impact of a video‐based professional development

Attaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS‐inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating students' engagement in high‐level thinking as they work on these tasks will become an increasingly important instructional challenge to address. This study reports findings from a video‐based professional development effort (i.e., professional development [PD] that use video‐clips of instruction as the main artifact of practice to support teacher learning) to support teachers' learning to select cognitively demanding tasks and to support students' learning during the enactment of these tasks in ways that are aligned with the NGSS vision. Particularly, we focused on the NGSS's charge to get students to make sense of and deeply think about scientific ideas as students try to explain phenomena. Analyses of teachers' pre‐ and post‐PD instruction indicate that PD‐participants began to adopt instructional practices associated with facilitating these kinds of student thinking in their own classrooms. The study has implications for the design of video‐based professional development for science teachers who are learning to facilitate the NGSS vision in science classrooms.     

Effects of perceived autonomy support from social agents on motivation and engagement of Chinese primary school students: Psychological need satisfaction as mediator

Little research has simultaneously examined the differential effects of autonomy support from parents, teachers, and peers (social agents) on students’ psychological need satisfaction, motivation, and school engagement. Drawing from Self-Determination Theory, this study examined the joint effects of perceived autonomy support from these three social agents on psychological needs, motivation, and engagement of 614 Chinese primary school students. Results revealed that perceived autonomy support from parents, teachers, and peers positively and uniquely predicted student psychological need satisfaction. The effect was strongest for parental autonomy support, although a model constraining the paths from all three social agents to be equal fit equally well. Need satisfaction predicted greater self-determined motivation and student engagement and mediated the effects of all three social agents on student motivation and engagement. The model showed strong gender invariance. The results highlight the importance of targeting all three social agents in multi-level interventions that aim to optimize student motivation and school engagement.     

The effect of an intervention to improve newly qualified teachers’ interpersonal style,students motivation and psychological need satisfaction in sport-based physical education

Recent developments in self-determination theory research in the educational setting (e.g., Reeve, Deci, & Ryan, 2004), suggest that teachers’ interpersonal style should be considered as consisting of three dimensions: autonomy support, structure and interpersonal involvement. Based on this theoretical proposition, the purpose of the present study was to test the effects of a training program for three physical education newly qualified teachers on the aforementioned teachers’ overt behaviors and students’ psychological needs satisfaction, self-determined motivation and engagement in sport-based physical education. After a baseline period of four lessons, the teachers attended an informational session on adaptive student motivation and how to support it. The training program also included individualized guidance during the last four lessons of the cycle. Results revealed that from pre- to post-intervention: (1) teachers managed to improve their teaching style in terms of all three dimensions, and (2) students were receptive to these changes, as shown by increases in their reported need satisfaction, self-determined motivation and engagement in the class.     

Teacher and child variables as predictors of academic engagement among low‐income African American children

A causal model for understanding the complex interplay between student‐reported teacher behaviors, student self‐systems, and student engagement was tested. One hundred seventeen African American students in grades 1 through 12 completed a comprehensive questionnaire regarding teacher context, self, and engagement variables. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized mediation models and to construct a path model. Most hypotheses were supported. Student self‐system variables (perceived competency and autonomy) mediated relations between teacher context (structure and autonomy support), and engagement. Contrary to predictions, however, teacher involvement exerted a strong and direct effect on student engagement even when controlling for grade level and self‐system variables. Given existing research showing that African American students are at risk for low teacher involvement and that engagement is critical for academic success, research and intervention strategies are urgently needed to promote teacher involvement with these students. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Exploring science teaching in interaction at the instructional core

Recent instructional reforms in science education aim to change the way students engage in learning in the discipline, as they describe that students are to engage with disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and the practices of science to make sense of phenomena (NRC, 2012). For such sensemaking to become a reality, there is a need to understand the ways in which students' thinking can be maintained throughout the trajectory of science lessons. Past research in this area tends to foreground either the curriculum or teachers' practices. We propose a more comprehensive view of science instruction, one that requires attention to teachers' practice, the instructional task, and students' engagement. In this study, by examining the implementation of the same lesson across three different classrooms, our analysis of classroom videos and artifacts of students' work revealed how the interaction of teachers' practices, students' intellectual engagement, and a cognitively demanding task together support rigorous instruction. Our analyses shed light on their interaction that shapes opportunities for students' thinking and sensemaking throughout the trajectory of a science lesson. The findings provide implications for ways to promote rigorous opportunities for students' learning in science classrooms.     

A person‐in‐context approach to student engagement in science: Examining learning activities and choice

Science education reform efforts in the Unites States call for a dramatic shift in the way students are expected to engage with scientific concepts, core ideas, and practices in the classroom. This new vision of science learning demands a more complex conceptual understanding of student engagement and research models that capture both the multidimensionality and contextual specificity of student engagement in science. In a unique application of person‐oriented analysis of experience sampling data, we employ cluster analysis to identify six distinct momentary engagement profiles representing different combinations of the behavioral, cognitive, and affective dimensions of student engagement in high school science classrooms. Students spend a majority of their classroom time in one of several engagement profiles characterized by high engagement on one dimension, but low levels on the others. Students exhibited low engagement across all three dimensions of engagement in about 22% of our observations. Full engagement, or high levels across all three dimensions, is the least frequent profile, occurring in only 11% of the observations. Students’ momentary engagement profiles are related in meaningful ways to both the learning activity in which students are engaged and the types of choices they are afforded. Laboratory activities provided especially polarized engagement experiences, producing full engagement, universally low engagement, and pleasurable engagement in which students are affectively engaged but are not engaged cognitively or behaviorally. Student choice is generally associated with more optimal engagement profiles and the specific type of choice matters in important ways. Choices about how to frame the learning activity have the most positive effects relative to other types of choices, such as choosing whom to work with or how much time to take. Results are discussed in terms of implications for practice and the utility of the methodological approach for evaluating the complexities of student engagement in science classrooms. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 88: 19–43, 2018     

Looking at Teacher Practices Through the Lens of Parenting Style

In this article, the author used a parenting style framework to explain mixed evidence about the influence of teacher practices on student outcomes. Participants included 3 fifth-grade math teachers and 45 of their students. The author assessed teacher practices, teaching style (i.e., demandingness and responsiveness), student engagement, self-efficacy, and standardized achievement test scores. The most academically and socially competent students were those who experienced an authoritative teaching style (i.e., consistent classroom management, support of student autonomy, and personal interest in students). The author found disengagement and limited ability beliefs in the authoritarian context (i.e., consistent classroom management but limited autonomy support and limited personal interest in students). She found smaller academic gains in the permissive context (i.e., inconsistent management, autonomy support, and interest in students).     

From the Court to the Classroom: Opportunities for Engagement,Learning, and Identity in Basketball and Classroom Mathematics

This study explored support for engagement in 2 settings: a high school basketball team and high school mathematics classrooms. Specifically, the study examined 3 aspects of these practices: (a) access to the domain, (b) opportunities to take on integral roles, and (c) opportunities for self-expression in the practice. Drawing on videotape and interview data from 2 African American high school students' participation in basketball and mathematics class, as well as interviews with players' teachers and coaches, this article analyzes how these 3 aspects of practices afforded differential engagement across settings. Findings indicated that the practice of basketball supported deep engagement as players had greater access to an understanding of the domain, were assigned and took up a unique role that was integral to the practice, and had opportunities to express themselves and feel competent. The high school mathematics classroom differentially afforded these opportunities, with 1 student taking them up and the other being unable to, and thus being less engaged. Potential implications of these 3 aspects of the practices for students' practice-linked identities and learning are discussed.     

Exploring teachers' informal formative assessment practices and students' understanding in the context of scientific inquiry

This study explores teachers' informal formative assessment practices in three middle school science classrooms. We present a model for examining these practices based on three components of formative assessment (e liciting, r ecognizing, and u sing information) and the three domains linked to scientific inquiry (epistemic frameworks, conceptual structures, and social processes). We describe the informal assessment practices as ESRU cycles—the teacher E licits a question; the S tudent responds; the teacher R ecognizes the student's response; and then U ses the information collected to support student learning. By tracking the strategies teachers used in terms of ESRU cycles, we were able to capture differences in assessment practices across the three teachers during the implementation of four investigations of a physical science unit on buoyancy. Furthermore, based on information collected in a three‐question embedded assessment administered to assess students' learning, we linked students' level of performance to the teachers' informal assessment practices. We found that the teacher who more frequently used complete ESRU cycles had students with higher performance on the embedded assessment as compared with the other two teachers. We conclude that the ESRU model is a useful way of capturing differences in teachers' informal assessment practices. Furthermore, the study suggests that effective informal formative assessment practices may be associated with student learning in scientific inquiry classrooms. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach     

What Works to Improve Student Literacy Achievement? An Examination of Instructional Practices in a Balanced Literacy Approach

A core assumption of the San Diego City Schools (SDCS) reform effort was that improved instructional practices, aligned with a balanced literacy approach, would be effective in improving student outcomes. This article explores this hypothesis by presenting findings from an analysis of classroom instruction data collected in 101 classrooms in 9 high-poverty elementary schools. Data were collected using a literacy observation tool adapted from prior research. The study found a prevalent focus on reading comprehension instruction and on students' active engagement in making meaning from text. Teachers' use of higher-level questions and discussion about text were substantially higher than that found by a prior study using the same instrument in similar classrooms elsewhere. Hierarchical Linear Modeling analyses of instruction and student outcome data indicate that teacher practices related to the higher-level meaning of text, writing instruction, and strategies for accountable talk were associated with growth in students' reading comprehension.     

A cross-classified path analysis of the self-determination theory model on the situational,individual and classroom levels in college education

According to self-determination theory (SDT), the extent to which students’ motivation is self-determined is critical for academic performance. SDT also proposes that self-determined academic motivation is facilitated when the learning environment supports the basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. This model of social support → needs satisfaction → motivation → learning outcomes is termed the general SDT model. Current evidence regarding this general SDT model is limited, in that, to date, no study has examined it in full using within-individual methods, which are critical for understanding inner psychological processes and mechanisms. Using a large and comprehensive college student dataset (total N of responses = 30,765), the current study aims to apply a within-individual analytical approach to the general SDT model. Specifically, we apply a cross-classified path model to account for both the between-student level and between-classroom level nesting structure. This model enables us to explain the relationships between the variables in the general SDT model on three levels: situational (within-student and within-classroom), between-student, and between-classroom.The results generally support the predictions on all three levels. For a student, a classroom, or a student’s specific experience within a classroom, the general SDT model received support. Most importantly, when the same student in the same classroom experiences higher levels of autonomy support, she or he is more likely to have her or his psychological needs satisfied and to study for self-determined reasons, which are associated with higher perceived learning performance. Various unexpected results, such as the direct effects of learning climate and the predominance of the competence need, are also reported. Overall, the current research provides a comprehensive and multilevel understanding of the role of self-determination in college classrooms.     

Use and relationships among effective practices in co-taught inclusive high school classrooms

Opportunities to respond (OTR) and specific praise are two practices that may be particularly beneficial to students learning in secondary inclusive classrooms. Yet, there is relatively little research on effective inclusion practices involving secondary students with learning disabilities (LD) or studies at the secondary level. This study sought to extend the existing research by evaluating the relationship between rates of OTR and specific praise in co-taught high school core classrooms on student on-task behaviour and class engagement. This study was part of a larger study conducted during the 2010–2011 school year. First, core academic classrooms were observed and data were collected on OTR, praise, and student behaviour. OTR information was collected using an audio recording device. Class audio recordings were divided into 15-minute intervals of whole group instruction and coded for OTR, specific praise, and non-specific praise. Observation data on student behaviour and class engagement that corresponded with each 15-minute interval were identified. Results indicate low levels of teacher use of OTR and praise statements and few significant relationships found between the variables of interest. Implications for practice and future research directions are also presented.     

Determinants of classroom engagement: a prospective test based on self-determination theory

ABSTRACT

This research has a dual purpose: to translate into Spanish and validate a classroom engagement measure and, over a semester, to analyse the effect of students’ perception of autonomy support on the need for autonomy and the effect of autonomy, in turn, on four types of engagement. Data were collected at three time points from 448 undergraduate students via a longitudinal design. The results revealed adequate psychometric properties for the engagement scale, and the hypothesised effects were supported. Autonomy support was a significant predictor of the need for autonomy, which, in turn, predicted changes in four types of classroom engagement. Emotional engagement displayed the strongest relationship with need for autonomy. Moreover, need for autonomy mediated the relationship between perceived autonomy support and each indicator of student engagement. The findings are interpreted as supporting self-determination theory’s motivation mediation model and could be considered in future intervention programmes to improve the teaching–learning process in education.     

The role of perceived autonomy support in predicting university students’ academic success mediated by academic self-efficacy and school engagement

This research analysed relationships between perceived teachers’ autonomy support and academic success, with self-efficacy and school engagement acting as mediators. This was a survey of 870 students from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), with a mean age of 26.99 years (SD = 5.09), 50.6% were men. Factor structure for measures was established. Then a structural equation model based on theoretical considerations was estimated. Final outcomes were grades and subjective well-being. Self-efficacy and school engagement were considered mediators, and the exogenous variable was perceived teacher’s autonomy support. This initial model fitted the data well, but several theoretically driven modifications were made and a final model was established. Teacher’s autonomy has important direct effects on engagement and self-efficacy, and it also was a direct predictor of subjective well-being. Self-efficacy and engagement had direct effects on subjective well-being. Grades were explained by the effects of self-efficacy, cognitive, and emotional engagement. As a conclusion, the main chain of effects hypothesised among the variables fitted the observed data well, and can, therefore, be tentatively supported: self-efficacy and engagement mediate the effects of autonomy support on academic achievement.