What teachers say and do to support students' autonomy during a learning activity.
2006/02/01 by Johnmarshall Reeve, Hyungshim Jang · 1,565 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Autonomy #Early Childhood Education and Development #Education, Achievement, and Giftedness #Mathematics education #Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports #Pedagogy #Personal autonomy #Psychology #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1037/0022-0663.98.1.209
published in Journal of Educational Psychology 98(1), 209-218 (American Psychological Association)
openalex publication_date 2006/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Abstract
Teachers with an autonomy-supportive style rely on different instructional behaviors to motivate their students than do teachers with a controlling style. In the present investigation, the authors tested which of these instructional behaviors actually correlated positively or negatively with students ’ autonomy. The authors used Deci, Spiegel, Ryan, Koestner, & Kauffman’s (1982) teacher–student laboratory paradigm to randomly assign 72 pairs of same-sex preservice teachers into the role of either teacher or student. From videotapes of the 10-min instructional episode, raters scored 11 hypothesized autonomy-supportive behaviors and 10 hypoth-esized controlling behaviors. Correlational analyses confirmed that students perceived the functional signif-icance of 8 instructional behaviors as autonomy supports and 6 instructional behaviors as autonomy thwarts. The discussion focuses on the interpretation and classroom implications of these data.
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