12
The Elementary School Journal Volume 106, Number 3 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/2006/10603-0003$05.00 Teachers as Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa Abstract Students are sometimes proactive and engaged in classroom learning activities, but they are also sometimes only reactive and passive. Recogniz- ing this, in this article I argue that students’ class- room engagement depends, in part, on the sup- portive quality of the classroom climate in which they learn. According to the dialectical frame- work within self-determination theory, students possess inner motivational resources that class- room conditions can support or frustrate. When teachers find ways to nurture these inner re- sources, they adopt an autonomy-supportive motivating style. After articulating what autonomy-supportive teachers say and do dur- ing instruction, I discuss 3 points: teachers can learn how to be more autonomy supportive to- ward students; teachers most engage students when they offer high levels of both autonomy support and structure; and an autonomy-sup- portive motivating style is an important ele- ment to a high-quality teacher-student relation- ship. During class, students can be curious, proactive, and highly engaged, or they can be alienated, reactive, and passive. Just how engaged students are during instruction de- pends, in part, on the supportive quality of the classroom conditions in which their learning takes place. One crucial ingredient within the supportive quality of the class- room is the teacher’s motivating style, and I focus specifically on a teacher’s autonomy- supportive style. In doing so, I view chil- dren’s motivation, engagement, and success- ful school functioning as an interpersonally coordinated process between teacher and students (Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000). When teacher-student interactions go well, teachers function both as a guide to struc- ture students’ learning opportunities as well as a support system to nurture stu-

Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

  • Upload
    others

  • View
    5

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

The Elementary School JournalVolume 106, Number 3� 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.0013-5984/2006/10603-0003$05.00

Teachers asFacilitators: WhatAutonomy-SupportiveTeachers Do and WhyTheir Students Benefit

Johnmarshall ReeveUniversity of Iowa

Abstract

Students are sometimes proactive and engagedin classroom learning activities, but they are alsosometimes only reactive and passive. Recogniz-ing this, in this article I argue that students’ class-room engagement depends, in part, on the sup-portive quality of the classroom climate in whichthey learn. According to the dialectical frame-work within self-determination theory, studentspossess inner motivational resources that class-room conditions can support or frustrate. Whenteachers find ways to nurture these inner re-sources, they adopt an autonomy-supportivemotivating style. After articulating whatautonomy-supportive teachers say and do dur-ing instruction, I discuss 3 points: teachers canlearn how to be more autonomy supportive to-ward students; teachers most engage studentswhen they offer high levels of both autonomysupport and structure; and an autonomy-sup-portive motivating style is an important ele-ment to a high-quality teacher-student relation-ship.

During class, students can be curious,proactive, and highly engaged, or they canbe alienated, reactive, and passive. Just howengaged students are during instruction de-pends, in part, on the supportive quality ofthe classroom conditions in which theirlearning takes place. One crucial ingredientwithin the supportive quality of the class-room is the teacher’s motivating style, andI focus specifically on a teacher’s autonomy-supportive style. In doing so, I view chil-dren’s motivation, engagement, and success-ful school functioning as an interpersonallycoordinated process between teacher andstudents (Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000).When teacher-student interactions go well,teachers function both as a guide to struc-ture students’ learning opportunities aswell as a support system to nurture stu-

Page 2: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

226 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

JANUARY 2006

dents’ interests and to enable students to in-ternalize new values, develop importantskills, and develop social responsibility. Un-der these supportive conditions, students’classroom activity is consistent with theirneeds, interests, and preferences, as stu-dents show strong motivation, active en-gagement, and meaningful learning (Deci,Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991; Reeve,2002; Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Self-determination theory (SDT) guidesmuch of the research on classroom condi-tions that foster versus undermine students’positive functioning. SDT assumes that allstudents, irrespective of their backgrounds,possess inherent growth tendencies andpsychological needs that provide a moti-vational foundation for their optimal func-tioning, academic engagement, constructivesocial development, and personal well-being (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1991; Ryan &Deci, 2000, 2002). The theory further as-sumes that students are always in active ex-change with their classroom environmentand therefore need supportive resourcesfrom their environment to nurture and in-volve these inner motivational resources. Ifthese inner resources are neglected orthwarted, then students’ motivation andengagement flounder.

The Dialectical FrameworkAccording to the SDT framework, studentspossess inherent needs and growth propen-sities to seek out and constructively engagein their classroom surroundings. Theseclassroom surroundings, in turn, feature ahost of influences that affect students’ dailymotivations and longer-term motivationaldevelopment, influences such as interestingthings to do and an instructional agenda tofollow. According to the dialectical frame-work within self-determination theory, astudent’s inner motivation and the class-room’s surrounding influences are dynam-ically interactive (Reeve, Deci, & Ryan,2004). Proactively, students express their in-ner motivational resources to engage in thelearning activities and classroom challenges

around them. These classrooms, in turn,tend either to support or thwart the expres-sion of students’ inner motivation. To theextent that classroom activities and priori-ties support these inner resources, the dia-lectical outcome will be synthesis, resultingin greater autonomy and positive function-ing for students. To the extent that control-ling and amotivating forces overpowerstudents’ proactive engagement, however,synthesis will be impaired and less optimaloutcomes will result (e.g., external regula-tion, disengagement, factual rather thanconceptual learning).

The dialectic framework appears inFigure 1. The upper arrow communicatesthat students proactively engage in class-room challenges as an expression of theirinner motivational resources. That is, theupper arrow signifies students’ active en-gagement in a learning activity as an ex-pression of their inner motivation. Thelower arrow communicates that classroomconditions sometimes nurture—but othertimes disrupt—these same inner motiva-tional resources. That is, teachers and class-room events can nurture and strengthen, orthwart and weaken, students’ autonomousmotivation. In this dialectic, both agentsconstantly change. With greater synthesis, astudent’s needs are fulfilled by the class-room environment and the classroom en-vironment, in turn, produces in the studentnew, internalized forms of extrinsic moti-vation to accept as her or his own. Withlesser synthesis, the student’s needs arethwarted by the classroom environmentand the classroom context imposes externaland introjected forms of extrinsic motiva-tion on the student.

Students’ Inner Motivational ResourcesSome student inner motivational re-

sources are inherent, including the psycho-logical needs for autonomy, competence,and relatedness. Other resources, however,are internalized, including certain interests,preferences, and values. Collectively, theseinner resources motivate students to engage

Page 3: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

Fig.

1.—

The

dia

lect

icfr

amew

ork

wit

hin

self

-det

erm

inat

ion

theo

ry

Page 4: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

228 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

JANUARY 2006

in the classroom environment as an expres-sion of themselves and out of the desire tointeract effectively in it.

The “self” in self-determination theory isviewed as action and development fromwithin (Deci & Ryan, 1991). Intrinsic moti-vation, for instance, spontaneously energizesimportant growth-fostering behaviors, suchas seeking out challenges, exercising skills,and pursuing interests. Through environ-mental transactions, students become awareof the school culture’s priorities, ideals, val-ues, goals, requirements, prescriptions (“dothis”), and proscriptions (“don’t do that”).Some of these ways of thinking and behav-ing become valued and, hence, are inter-nalized and personally endorsed by thestudent (Ryan & Connell, 1989). For the stu-dent, the self-related developmental pro-cess that occurs with such internalization isto grow or differentiate the self into greatercomplexity, as by developing new interests,accepting a cultural priority as one’s own,and internalizing a school-based regulationor prescription (“Be punctual”).

Classroom EnvironmentsClassroom environments sometimes but-

tress but other times impede students’ activenature and autonomous strivings. Some in-fluences are interpersonal relationships, in-cluding teachers and the interpersonal mo-tivating style they enact during instruction.Other influences are classroom events suchas affordances (interesting activities, opti-mal challenges), external events (rewards,praise, feedback), and social demands(goals, norms, prescriptions).

A teacher’s motivating style can be un-derstood along a continuum that rangesfrom highly controlling to highly auton-omy supportive (Deci, Schwartz, Shein-man, & Ryan, 1981; Reeve, Bolt, & Cai,1999). In general, autonomy-supportiveteachers facilitate, whereas relatively con-trolling teachers interfere with, the congru-ence between students’ self-determinedinner guides and their day-to-day class-

room activity. Autonomy-supportive teach-ers facilitate congruence by identifying andnurturing students’ needs, interests, andpreferences and by creating classroom op-portunities for students to have these inter-nal states guide their behavior. In contrast,relatively controlling teachers interferewith students’ self-determination becausethey ask students to adhere to a teacher-constructed instructional agenda that alien-ates students from their inner motivationalresources and instead defines what studentsshould or must do. In doing so, controllingteachers offer extrinsic rewards and pres-suring language to shape students intocompliance with that agenda.

Autonomy Support in the ClassroomAutonomy-supportive environments in-volve and nurture (rather than neglect andfrustrate) students’ psychological needs,personal interests, and integrated values.Supporting these inner motivational re-sources is a worthwhile undertaking be-cause students in classrooms taught byautonomy-supportive teachers, comparedto students in classrooms taught by con-trolling teachers, experience an impressiveand meaningful range of positive educa-tional outcomes, including greater per-ceived competence (Deci et al., 1981), highermastery motivation (Ryan & Grolnick,1986), enhanced creativity (Koestner, Ryan,Bernieri, & Holt, 1984), a preference for op-timal challenge over easy success (Shapira,1976), increased conceptual understanding(Benware & Deci, 1984), active and deeperinformation processing (Grolnick & Ryan,1987), greater engagement (Reeve, Jang,Carrell, Barch, & Jeon, 2004), positive emo-tionality (Patrick, Skinner, & Connell, 1993),higher intrinsic motivation (Reeve, Nix, &Hamm, 2003), enhanced well-being (Black& Deci, 2000), better academic performance(Boggiano, Flink, Shields, Seelbach, & Bar-rett, 1993), and academic persistence ratherthan dropping out of school (Vallerand, For-tier, & Guay, 1997).

Page 5: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

FACILITATORS 229

Autonomy-Supportive MotivatingStyleSelf-determination theory researchers

have articulated what it means to supportstudents’ autonomy in an educational set-ting and have identified what autonomy-supportive teachers do during instructionthat differentiates their motivating stylefrom that of their relatively controllingcounterparts (Assor, Kaplan, & Roth, 2002;Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994; Deci,Spiegel, Ryan, Koestner, & Kauffman, 1982;Flink, Boggiano, & Barrett, 1990; Reeve &Jang, in press; Reeve et al., 1999; Reeve,Jang, et al., 2004; Ryan & La Guardia, 1999).An autonomy-supportive style subsumes aset of beliefs and assumptions about the na-ture of student motivation, and it is not aprescribed set of techniques and strategies.That said, however, the following ap-proaches to instruction characterize whatautonomy-supportive teachers say and doto support their students’ autonomy and ac-tive engagement.

Nurture inner motivational resources.When teachers nurture students’ innermotivational resources, they find ways tocoordinate the instructional activities theyoffer with students’ preferences, interests,sense of enjoyment, sense of challenge,competencies, and choice-making. Theygenerally avoid external regulators such asincentives, rewards, directives, deadlines, as-signments, and compliance requests. Thisfirst aspect of an autonomy-supportive stylerepresents teachers’ efforts to nurture stu-dents’ intrinsic motivation and self-deter-mined extrinsic motivation rather than try-ing to socially engineer non-self-determinedtypes of extrinsic motivation.

Nurturing students’ inner motivationalresources addresses the motivational prob-lem teachers face when they seek ways toinitiate students’ classroom activity. Whenintroducing a learning activity, teachershope that students will engage in that activ-ity with effort and enthusiasm. For instance,a teacher might invite students to read abook, contribute constructively to group

work, or invest effort in a seatwork project.Autonomy-supportive teachers supportstudents’ initiative on tasks such as these byidentifying and then building instructionalactivities around students’ inner resources.If the teacher cannot spark students’ inter-est, enjoyment, or sense of challenge, shecontinues to rethink how she might presentthat same activity so that student engage-ment will be more likely to include the ac-companying support from students’ under-lying inner motivational resources.

Rely on informational, noncontrollinglanguage. When teachers rely on informa-tional, noncontrolling language, they com-municate classroom opportunities and re-quirements through messages that areinformational and flexible rather thancontrolling and rigid. Informational lan-guage revolves around information-rich,competence-affirming utterances to iden-tify and explain why students are doingwell or making progress, such as “Yourwriting is improving—the topic sentencesyou wrote today foreshadow your para-graphs really well.” Noncontrolling lan-guage revolves around using communica-tions not to push, pressure, or coercestudents into compliance with the teacher’sagenda but, instead, using communicationsto help students find ways to coordinatetheir inner resources with their moment-to-moment activity.

Relying on informational, noncontrollinglanguage addresses the problem teachersface when they need to respond to students’motivational problems like listlessness, poorperformance, or inappropriate behavior. Torespond to displays of lackluster motivationor poor performance, a controlling teacherwill generally treat poor performance eval-uatively (perhaps as a target for criticism)and communicate classroom requirementsthrough no-nonsense messages that arerigid and pressuring (e.g., “Work faster; youshould’ve been done by now”). In contrast,autonomy-supportive teachers treat stu-dents’ poor performances as problems to besolved, and they communicate classroom

Page 6: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

230 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

JANUARY 2006

requirements through a language that is in-formational and flexible. The goal is to helpstudents better to diagnose the underlyingcause of their poor performance and takethe action needed to address the problem.For instance, a teacher might observe a stu-dent’s passivity and ask, “I’ve noticed thatyou chose not to join the group’s work; isanything wrong?”

Communicate value and provide ration-ales. When asking students to engage in arequested activity, lesson, behavior, or pro-cedure that has little interest and value tothem, autonomy-supportive teachers makea special effort to identify and explain theuse, value, importance, or otherwise hiddenpersonal utility within the undertaking thatjustifies an investment of effort. Teachersfrequently and necessarily ask students todo things that are not intrinsically interest-ing and are, in fact, often unappealing (e.g.,complete a worksheet, wait their turn in line,wear protective gear during a laboratory ex-ercise). But autonomy-supportive teachershelp students generate self-determined mo-tivation by articulating why the undertakingis useful.

Promoting valuing addresses the moti-vational problem teachers face when theyask students to engage in a lesson or behav-ioral request that is an uninteresting (butimportant) endeavor. When autonomy-supportive teachers provide students whoface an uninteresting lesson with a rationalethat is convincing and satisfying (from thestudents’ point of view), then students un-derstand why they are being asked to investtheir attention and effort in a requested ac-tivity. This understanding allows a processof internalization to occur (Reeve, Jang,Hardre, & Omura, 2002), as students essen-tially say to themselves “Yeah, okay, thatmakes sense; I’ll do it.” For instance, im-mediately before asking students to wearuncomfortable and unfashionable goggles,the teacher might explain the need to pro-tect everyone’s eyesight and that the gog-gles are a sure way to do that. To the extentthat students agree that protecting their

eyesight is worth their time, they will inturn want to wear the goggles. Without theteacher-provided rationale, however, stu-dent motivation is too much at risk becausestudents will understandably have a diffi-cult time generating the motivation neededto enact an uninteresting or unvaluedcourse of action.

Acknowledge and accept students’ ex-pressions of negative affect. Because class-rooms have rules, requests, and instruc-tional agendas that are sometimes at oddswith students’ preferences, students some-times complain and resist. When teachersacknowledge and accept such feelings, theycommunicate an understanding of stu-dents’ perspectives. They accept that nega-tive affect is in some sense a valid reactionto imposed demands, limits, and assign-ments. The negative affect can actually beuseful to the teacher as she plans how bestto structure the learning environment to ac-complish the twin goals of having studentswork on the classroom agenda and do so ina way that is consistent with, rather thandiscrepant from, their inner motivationalresources. Controlling teachers, in contrast,react to students’ expressions of negative af-fect by countering it. They communicatethat such an attitude is unacceptable, some-thing that needs to be changed to be moreacceptable to the teacher.

Acknowledging and accepting students’expressions of negative affect addresses themotivational problem teachers face eachtime they negotiate the inevitable conflictsthat arise between what students want to doand what teachers need students to do. Forinstance, a teacher might ask students tocomplete a worksheet, whereas studentsmight want to do something else at thattime. Facing such a conflict, students oftenexpress some resistance and negative affec-tivity. Instead of countering students’ neg-ativity with comments such as “Shape up”or “Just get the work done,” autonomy-supportive teachers acknowledge and ac-cept students’ expressions of negative af-fect. They welcome the ensuing discussion

Page 7: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

FACILITATORS 231

of how the source of resistance might bereengineered because, from a motivationalpoint of view, it is a crucial instructionalgoal to transform a lesson that studentsview as something that is not worth doinginto something that is worth doing.

Autonomy-supportive behaviors. Re-searchers have also identified specificallywhat autonomy-supportive teachers do inthe classroom. The following instructionalbehaviors function as autonomy supports:(1) listen carefully; (2) create opportunitiesfor students to work in their own way;(3) provide opportunities for students totalk; (4) arrange learning materials and seat-ing patterns so students manipulate objectsand conversations rather than passivelywatch and listen; (5) encourage effort andpersistence; (6) praise signs of improvementand mastery; (7) offer progress-enablinghints when students seem stuck; (8) areresponsive to students’ questions and com-ments; and (9) communicate a clear ac-knowledgment of students’ perspectives(Deci et al., 1982; Flink et al., 1990; Reeve &Jang, in press; Reeve et al., 1999). In con-trast, the following instructional behaviorsact as autonomy thwarts: (1) keep possessionof and monopolize the learning materials; (2)physically exibit worked-out solutions andanswers before students have time to workon the problem independently; (3) tell stu-dents the right answer instead of allowingthem time and opportunity to discover it;(4) utter directives and commands; (5) intro-ject “should,” “have to,” “must,” or “got to”statements within the flow of instruction;and (6) use controlling questions as a way ofdirecting students’ work (e.g., “Can you dowhat I showed you?”).

Learning to Be More AutonomySupportiveIdentifying what autonomy-supportive

teachers say and do during instruction isimportant because it provides a basis foroffering practical recommendations toteachers who might be interested in usinga more autonomy-supportive motivating

style with their own students. Early workshowed that teachers’ motivating styleswere relatively stable over the academicyear (Deci et al., 1981), but subsequent workhas shown that veteran teachers can learnto expand their motivating styles to incor-porate an increased use of autonomy-sup-portive instructional behaviors (deCharms,1976; Reeve, Jang, et al., 2004). In these stud-ies, after experienced teachers received aworkshop-like experience on how to bemore autonomy supportive toward theirstudents, they were able to expand their useof autonomy-supportive strategies duringtheir own instruction. Further, the moreautonomy supportive teachers were to-ward their students, the more their stu-dents benefited in terms of subsequentclassroom engagement (Reeve, Jang et al.,2004) and academic achievement (de-Charms, 1976).

Overall, these findings suggest that(1) teachers’ motivating styles are rela-tively enduring and stable aspects of theirinstructional style; (2) motivating styles aremalleable, at least when teachers receiveappropriate information in a workshop-like experience; and (3) students show edu-cational gains in proportion to their teachers’practicing a more autonomy-supportivestyle.

Autonomy Support and StructureAutonomy support revolves around find-ing ways to enhance students’ freedom tocoordinate their inner motivational re-sources with how they spend their time inthe classroom. Its opposite is controllingstudents’ behavior. Emphasizing autonomysupport’s opposite is important, becauseautonomy support is frequently and erro-neously equated with the removal of struc-ture (for a discussion of this issue, see Ryan,1993; Ryan & Stiller, 1991). A lack of struc-ture yields not an autonomy-supportive en-vironment but instead one that is permis-sive, indulgent, or laissez-faire.

Structure revolves around teachers com-municating clearly what they expect stu-

Page 8: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

232 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

JANUARY 2006

dents to do to achieve academic goals. It in-volves a teacher’s offering of plans, goals,standards, expectations, schedules, rules,directions, challenges, reminders, prompts,models, examples, hints, suggestions, learn-ing strategies, rewards, feedback, and othersuch sources of direction and guidance asstudents attempt to make progress in livingup to what is expected of them (Reeve,2005). The opposite of structure is chaos anda lack of clarity as to what students aresupposed to do. Given this conceptualiza-tion of structure, it is apparent that auton-omy support and structure exist as twodifferent—not opposite—aspects of teach-ers’ motivating styles, each of which con-tributes positively to students’ motivation(Skinner & Belmont, 1993).

A teacher can present a highly struc-tured learning environment to students in away that is either autonomy supportive orcontrolling. By structuring a learning envi-ronment in an autonomy-supportive way,teachers provide students with clarity ofwhat to do along with a freedom for choice,voice, and initiative; by structuring a learn-ing environment in a controlling way, teach-ers clearly tell students what to do, and theydo so with little voice from the students.When teachers provide students with bothhigh freedom and high structure (“freedomwithin limits”; Rogers, 1969), students showa healthy profile in terms of their motiva-tion, engagement, and learning (Grolnick &Ryan, 1987; Jang & Reeve, 2005; Koestner etal., 1984), and this is true for the followingautonomy-supportive versus controllingteacher behaviors: rules (Koestner et al.,1984), praise (Ryan, Mims, & Koestner,1983), communications (Schuh, 2004), goals(Jang, 2005), and instructional sets (Grolnick& Ryan, 1987). Each of these studies pointsto the same conclusion—namely, whenteachers use classroom structure to controlstudents’ behavior, then students’ motiva-tion and learning suffer, but when teachersuse the same aspect of classroom structureto support students’ autonomy, then stu-dents’ motivation and learning thrive.

Rather than existing as opposites, auton-omy support and structure work well to-gether because structure facilitates in stu-dents an intention to act (e.g., “I plan to readthe book”), whereas autonomy support al-lows those formulated intentions to be self-determined and coordinated with one’s in-ner resources (e.g., “I plan to read the bookand enjoy the experience; reading is some-thing I want to do”).

Teacher-Provided Autonomy Supportand the Teacher-Student RelationshipThough there is no one best way to teach,some ways in which teachers relate to stu-dents are more likely to promote engage-ment, learning, achievement, and well-being than are other ways (De Wolff & vanIjzendoorn, 1997; Kochanska, 2002; Main,Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Figure 2 sum-marizes an exhaustive review of the litera-ture on motivating styles, parenting styles,attachment patterns, moral development,and prosocial orientations to identify fourrelatively high-quality ways of relating tostudents. To some extent these four teachercharacteristics overlap, but research showsthat each characteristic further contributesto students’ positive academic functioningin a unique way.

Attunement occurs when teachers readand sense students’ state of being and ad-just their instruction accordingly; a syno-nym for attunement is sensitivity (De Wolff& van Ijzendoorn, 1997; Kochanska, 2002).When teachers are attuned to their students,they know what students are thinking andfeeling, how engaged they are during alearning activity, and whether or not theyunderstand the lesson. Attuned teachersknow these things because they listenclosely to what their students say and makea special effort to be aware of what theirstudents want and need. This sensitivity al-lows the teacher to be responsive to stu-dents’ words, behaviors, needs, preferences,and emotions. Relatedness is a sense of be-ing close to another person; it occurs whenteachers create the conditions in which

Page 9: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

FACILITATORS 233

Fig. 2.—Four teacher characteristics within the provision of a high-quality teacher-student relationship

students feel special and important to theteacher; it revolves around a teacher-provided sense of warmth, affection, andapproval for students (Furrer & Skinner,2003). When students feel related to theirteacher, they show lesser negative affectiv-ity and greater classroom engagement. Sup-portiveness is a teacher’s affirmation of a stu-dent’s capacity for self-direction. Whenthey support their students’ capacities forself-direction, teachers accept students asthey are, provide encouragement, and assistthem in their efforts to realize the goals theyset for themselves. Supportiveness is im-portant to students’ school success becausethe more supportive teachers are, the morecompetent students feel, the more creativethey are, the greater they feel in control oftheir learning, and the more engaged theyare during learning activities (Koestner etal., 1984; Reeve, 1996; Ryan & Grolnick,1986). Finally, gentle discipline is a suppor-tive socialization strategy that involves

guiding and explaining why one way ofthinking or behaving is right and anotheris wrong. Its opposite is power assertion,which is a controlling socialization strat-egy that involves forceful commands andan insistence that students comply with theteacher’s request or demand (Kochanska,Aksan, & Nichols, 2003).

Given this general perspective on howteachers might offer students a high-quality relationship, an interesting ques-tion is how teacher-provided autonomysupport contributes to the teacher character-istics shown in Figure 2. Some autonomy-supportive acts of instruction can be seen asattunement, including making a special ef-fort to identify students’ inner motivationalresources, listening carefully to what stu-dents say, and asking students questionsabout what they would like to do. Otherautonomy-supportive acts can be seen asgentle discipline, such as providing ration-ales and accepting students’ expressions of

Page 10: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

234 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

JANUARY 2006

negative affect. Most autonomy-supportiveinstructional behaviors, however, can beseen as supportiveness. When supportive,teachers nurture students’ inner motiva-tional resources, rely on informationalrather than controlling language, allow stu-dents time to work in their own way, createopportunities for students to exercise andcommunicate their own voice, praise pro-gress, encourage effort, provide progress-making hints and suggestions, and areresponsive to students’ suggestions andcomments (Reeve & Jang, in press).

When considered as a whole, the exer-cise of an autonomy-supportive motivatingstyle adds substantial and significant in-sight to the more general understanding ofwhat it means to be supportive toward stu-dents. Researchers in educational psychol-ogy, child development, attachment theory,and moral socialization know a great dealabout what it means to provide attunement,relatedness, and gentle discipline, but theconcept of supportiveness has proven harderto conceptualize. The subject of the presentarticle—what an autonomy-supportive mo-tivating style is and how its exercise benefitsstudents—offers new insights for teacherswho ask how they can be more supportiveof their students.

ConclusionThe study of a teacher’s autonomy-sup-portive motivating style and the study ofthe student-teacher dialectical frameworkwithin self-determination theory are im-portant because an autonomy-supportivestyle represents the prototype of the sort ofinterpersonal relationship that facilitates stu-dents’ autonomous motivation and class-room engagement. In this article I tried tomake five points about such a motivatingstyle and its benefits to students: (1) Re-search has shown what autonomy-suppor-tive teachers say and do during instruction.(2) These autonomy-supportive acts of in-struction enhance students’ autonomy andengagement. (3) An autonomy-supportivemotivating style is malleable—it can be

learned. (4) Autonomy support and struc-ture complement, rather than interferewith, one another, to cultivate in studentsautonomous intentions to act. (5) Teacher-provided autonomy support constitutes apivotal element in offering students a high-quality, growth-promoting relationship.

Collectively, these five points lead to theconclusion that students benefit whenteachers act as facilitators of their innermotivation—facilitators who structure thelearning environment in ways that nurture,involve, and expand on (rather than ne-glect, thwart, and bypass) their inner moti-vational resources.

References

Assor, A., Kaplan, H., & Roth, G. (2002). Choiceis good, but relevance is excellent: Auton-omy-enhancing and suppressing teacher be-haviours predicting students’ engagement inschoolwork. British Journal of Educational Psy-chology, 72, 261–278.

Benware, C., & Deci, E. L. (1984). Quality oflearning with an active versus passive moti-vational set. American Educational ResearchJournal, 21, 755–765.

Black, A. E., & Deci, E. L. (2000). The effects ofinstructors’ autonomy support and students’autonomous motivation on learning organicchemistry: A self-determination theory per-spective. Science Education, 84, 740–756.

Boggiano, A. K., Flink, C., Shields, A., Seelbach,A., & Barrett, M. (1993). Use of techniquespromoting students’ self-determination: Ef-fects on students’ analytic problem-solvingskills. Motivation and Emotion, 17, 319–336.

deCharms, R. (1976). Enhancing motivation:Change in the classroom. New York: Irvington.

Deci, E. L., Eghrari, H., Patrick, B. C., & Leone,D. R. (1994). Facilitating internalization: Theself-determination theory perspective. Jour-nal of Personality, 62, 119–142.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic moti-vation and self-determination in human behavior.New York: Plenum.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M., (1991). A motivationalapproach to self: Integration in personality.In R. Dienstbier (Ed.), Nebraska symposium onmotivation: Perspectives on motivation (Vol. 38,pp. 237–288). Lincoln: University of Ne-braska Press.

Page 11: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

FACILITATORS 235

Deci, E. L., Schwartz, A., Sheinman, L., & Ryan,R. M. (1981). An instrument to assess adults’orientations toward control versus auton-omy in children: Reflections on intrinsic mo-tivation and perceived competence. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 73, 642–650.

Deci, E. L., Spiegel, N. H., Ryan, R. M., Koestner,R., & Kauffman, M. (1982). Effects of perfor-mance standards on teaching styles: Behav-ior of controlling teachers. Journal of Educa-tional Psychology, 74, 852–859.

Deci, E. L., Vallerand, R. J., Pelletier, L. G., &Ryan, R. M. (1991). Motivation and educa-tion: The self-determination perspective.Educational Psychologist, 26, 325–346.

De Wolff, M., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (1997).Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysison parental antecedents of infant attachment.Child Development, 68, 571–591.

Flink, C., Boggiano, A. K., & Barrett, M. (1990).Controlling teaching strategies: Undermin-ing children’s self-determination and perfor-mance. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 59, 916–924.

Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. A. (2003). Sense of re-latedness as a factor in children’s academicengagement and performance. Journal of Edu-cational Psychology, 95, 148–162.

Grolnick, W. S., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). Autonomyin children’s learning: An experimental andindividual differences investigation. Journalof Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 890–898.

Jang, H. (2005). Preserving and enhancing students’autonomy by delivering directed instruction inan autonomy-supportive way. Unpublishedmanuscript, University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Kochanska, G. (2002). Mutually responsive ori-entation between mothers and their youngchildren: A context for the early develop-ment of conscience. Current Directions in Psy-chological Science, 11, 191–195.

Kochanska, G., Aksan, N., & Nichols, K. E.(2003). Maternal power assertion in disci-pline and moral discourse contexts: Com-monalities, differences, and implications forchildren’s moral conduct and cognition. De-velopmental Psychology, 39, 949–963.

Koestner, R., Ryan, R. M., Bernieri, F., & Holt, K.(1984). Setting limits on children’s behavior:The differential effects of controlling versusinformational styles on intrinsic motivationand creativity. Journal of Personality, 52, 233–248.

Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Se-curity in infancy, childhood, and adulthood:A move to the level of representation. In I.Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growingpoints of attachment theory and research.

Monographs of the Society for Research in ChildDevelopment, 50(1–2, Serial No. 209).

Patrick, B. C., Skinner, E. A., & Connell, J. P.(1993). What motivates children’s behaviorand emotion? Joint effects of perceived con-trol and autonomy in the academic domain.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65,781–791.

Reeve, J. (1996). Motivating others: Nurturing in-ner motivational resources. Boston: Allyn andBacon.

Reeve, J. (2002). Self-determination theory ap-plied to educational settings. In E. L. Deci &R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determi-nation theory (pp. 183–203). Rochester, NY:University of Rochester.

Reeve, J. (2005). Extrinsic rewards and inner mo-tivation. In C. Weinstein & C. Evertson(Eds.), Handbook of classroom management: Re-search, practice, and contemporary issues (pp.645–664). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Reeve, J., Bolt, E., & Cai, Y. (1999). Autonomy-supportive teachers: How they teach andmotivate students. Journal of Educational Psy-chology, 91, 537–548.

Reeve, J., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2004). Self-determination theory: A dialectical frame-work for understanding sociocultural influ-ences on student motivation. In D. M.McInerney & S. Van Etten (Eds.), Big theoriesrevisited: Research on sociocultural influences onmotivation and learning (pp. 31–60). Green-wich, CT: Information Age.

Reeve, J., & Jang, H. (in press). What teachers sayand do to support students’ autonomy dur-ing a learning activity. Journal of EducationalPsychology.

Reeve, J., Jang, H., Carrell, D., Barch, J., & Jeon,S. (2004). Enhancing students’ engagementby increasing teachers’ autonomy support.Motivation and Emotion, 28, 147–169.

Reeve, J., Jang, H., Hardre, P., & Omura, M.(2002). Providing a rationale in an auton-omy-supportive way as a strategy to moti-vate others during an uninteresting activity.Motivation and Emotion, 26, 183–207.

Reeve, J., Nix, G., & Hamm, D. (2003). Testingmodels of the experience of self-determina-tion in intrinsic motivation and the conun-drum of choice. Journal of Educational Psy-chology, 95, 375–392.

Roeser, R. W., Eccles, J. S., & Sameroff, A. J.(2000). School as a context of early adoles-cents’ academic and socio-emotional devel-opment: A summary of research findings. El-ementary School Journal, 100, 443–471.

Rogers, C. R. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus,OH: Charles E. Merrill.

Page 12: Teachers as Abstract Facilitators: What Teachers Do and ...Facilitators: What Autonomy-Supportive Teachers Do and Why Their Students Benefit Johnmarshall Reeve University of Iowa

236 THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL

JANUARY 2006

Ryan, R. M. (1993). Agency and organization: In-trinsic motivation, autonomy and the self inpsychological development. In J. Jacobs (Ed.),Nebraska symposium on motivation: Developmen-tal perspectives on motivation (Vol. 40, pp. 1–56).Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Ryan, R. M., & Connell, J. P. (1989). Perceived lo-cus of causality and internalization: Examin-ing reasons for acting in two domains. Journalof Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 749–761.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determi-nation theory and the facilitation of intrinsicmotivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002). An overviewof self-determination theory: An organismic-dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci & R. M.Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination re-search (pp. 3–33). Rochester, NY: Universityof Rochester Press.

Ryan, R. M., & Grolnick, W. S. (1986). Originsand pawns in the classroom: Self-report andprojective assessments of individual differ-ences in children’s perceptions. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 50, 550–558.

Ryan, R. M., & La Guardia, J. G. (1999). Achieve-ment motivation within a pressured society:Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to learnand the politics of school reform. In T. Ur-dan (Ed.), Advances in motivation and achieve-

ment (Vol. 11, pp. 45–85). Greenwich, CT:JAI.

Ryan, R. M., Mims, V., & Koestner, R. (1983). Re-lation of reward contingency and interper-sonal context to intrinsic motivation: A re-view and test using cognitive evaluationtheory. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 45, 736–750.

Ryan, R. M., & Stiller, J. (1991). The social con-texts of internalization: Parent and teacherinfluences on autonomy, motivation andlearning. In P. R. Pintrich & M. L. Maehr(Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement:Vol. 7. Goals and self-regulatory processes (pp.115–149). Greenwich, CT: JAI.

Schuh, K. L. (2004). Learner-centered principlesin teacher-centered practices? Teaching andTeacher Education, 20, 833–846.

Shapira, Z. (1976). Expectancy determinants ofintrinsically motivated behavior. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 34, 1235–1244.

Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motiva-tion in the classroom: Reciprocal effects ofteacher behavior and student engagementacross the school year. Journal of EducationalPsychology, 85, 571–581.

Vallerand, R. J., Fortier, M. S., & Guay, F. (1997).Self-determination and persistence in a real-life setting: Toward a motivational model ofhigh school dropout. Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 72, 1161–1176.