Join with a free account for more service, or become a member for full access to exclusives and extra support of WorldSupporter >>

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 innter 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 moitvating style. Such a style is an important element to a high-quality teacher-student relationship. It appears that one crucical ingredient within the supportive quality of the classroom climate is the supportive style of the teacher.

A teachers 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 belieds 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 persistance; (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 sutdents; (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 allign 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 negatiuve 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 alle 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.

Image

Access: 
Public

Image

Click & Go to more related summaries or chapters:

Summaries per article with History of Psychology at University of Groningen 19/20 and earlier

Image

 

 

Contributions: posts

Help other WorldSupporters with additions, improvements and tips

Add new contribution

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Image

Spotlight: topics

Image

Check how to use summaries on WorldSupporter.org

Online access to all summaries, study notes en practice exams

How and why use WorldSupporter.org for your summaries and study assistance?

  • For free use of many of the summaries and study aids provided or collected by your fellow students.
  • For free use of many of the lecture and study group notes, exam questions and practice questions.
  • For use of all exclusive summaries and study assistance for those who are member with JoHo WorldSupporter with online access
  • For compiling your own materials and contributions with relevant study help
  • For sharing and finding relevant and interesting summaries, documents, notes, blogs, tips, videos, discussions, activities, recipes, side jobs and more.

Using and finding summaries, notes and practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter

There are several ways to navigate the large amount of summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter.

  1. Use the summaries home pages for your study or field of study
  2. Use the check and search pages for summaries and study aids by field of study, subject or faculty
  3. Use and follow your (study) organization
    • by using your own student organization as a starting point, and continuing to follow it, easily discover which study materials are relevant to you
    • this option is only available through partner organizations
  4. Check or follow authors or other WorldSupporters
  5. Use the menu above each page to go to the main theme pages for summaries
    • Theme pages can be found for international studies as well as Dutch studies

Do you want to share your summaries with JoHo WorldSupporter and its visitors?

Quicklinks to fields of study for summaries and study assistance

Main summaries home pages:

Main study fields:

Main study fields NL:

Follow the author: Vintage Supporter
Work for WorldSupporter

Image

JoHo can really use your help!  Check out the various student jobs here that match your studies, improve your competencies, strengthen your CV and contribute to a more tolerant world

Working for JoHo as a student in Leyden

Parttime werken voor JoHo

Statistics
1329