Teachers as facilitators: what autonomy-supportive teachers do and why their students benefit - Reeve - 2006 - Article

On what component depends students' classroom engagement?

Sometimes, students are proactive and engaged. At other times, students are reactive and passive. In this article, Reeve claims that students' classroom engagement depends, partly, on the supportive quality of the classroom climate in which they learn.

What is a crucial feature of a supportive quality of the classroom climate?

Following the SDT framework, students possess inner motivational resources. All students, irrespective of their backgrounds, possess an internal growth tendency and have psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) that provide a motivational foundation for their academic engagement, constructive social development, and optimal functioning. These inner resources can be supported or frustrated by the classroom conditions. When the teacher is able to find a way to nurture these inner resources, they adopt an autonomy-supportive motivating style. Such a style is an important element to a high-quality teacher-student relationship. It appears that one crucial ingredient within the supportive quality of the classroom climate is the supportive style of the teacher.

A teacher's motivating style can be considered along a continuum, with on the one side highly controlling and on the other side highly autonomy supportive. Generally, autonomy-supportive teachers facilitate the congruence between students' self-determined inner desires and their daily classroom activity, whereas highly controlling teachers interfere with this. An environment that is autonomy-supportive involves and nurtures students' psychological needs, personal interests, and integrated values. Research has shown that this led students to experience an impressive and meaningful range of positive educational outcomes, including for instance greater perceived performance, higher mastery motivation, enhanced creativity, and a preference for optimal challenge over easy success.

What are characteristics of an autonomy-supportive motivational style?

Although an autonomy-supportive style presumed a set of beliefs and assumptions about the nature of student motivation, and thus is not a set of prescribed techniques and strategies, the authors found the following features to be common in autonomy-supportive teachers:

• Nurture inner motivational resources, which offers students' preferences, interests, sense of challenge, competencies, and choice-making. This is contrasted to offering external rewards, which should be avoided.
• Relying on informational, non-controlling language. Communicate classroom opportunities and information flexible, rather than controlling and rigid.
• Communicate value and provide rationales. Sometimes, students show little interest and engagement in a certain activity. In those cases, autonomy-supportive teachers show an increased effort to explain the use, value, importance, or otherwise hidden personal utility of the task at hand.
• Acknowledge and accept students' expressions of negative affect as a means to communicate an understanding of the perspective of the student.

In addition, the following autonomy-supportive behaviors are identified by teachers: (1) listen carefully; (2) create opportunities for students to work independently; (3) offer opportunities for students to talk; (4) arrange learning materials and seating patterns such that students can manipulate objects and conversations actively, rather than passively watch and listen; (5) encourage effort and persistence; (6) praise signs of improvement and mastery; (7) offer progress-enabling hints when a students seems to not show any more progress; (8) be responsive to questions and comments of students; (9) communicate a clear acknowledgement of the perspective of students.

Four components of the autonomy-supportive style have been identified to contribute to students' positive academic functioning, each in a unique way: attunement, relatedness, supportiveness, and gentle discipline. Attunement occurs when teachers read and sense students' state of being and accordingly adjust their instruction. In other words, when teachers are attuned to their students, they know what students are thinking and feeling, how engaged they are, and whether or not they understand the lesson. They know this because they listen to the student. Subsequently, the make a special effort to align the instruction to what the student wants and needs. Relatedness refers to a sense of being close to another person. A teacher who shows warmth, affection, and approval for students can create such a feeling. When students feel related to their teacher, they show more classroom engagement and less negative affect. Supportiveness refers to a teacher's affirmation of a student's capacity and competence. Lastly, gentle discipline concerns a supportive socialization strategy aimed and guiding and explaining why one way of thinking or behaving is right and another is wrong. This can be contrasted to power assertion, in which one forcefully commands and insists that students comply with the teacher's demand.

To conclude, research has shown that teachers motivating styles are relatively stable aspects of their instructional style across time. Yet, motivating styles are malleable, at least when teachers receive appropriate information in a workshop experience. And third, student show increased educational improvements when teachers practice a more autonomy-supportive style.