Grounded in self-determination theory (SDT), the present study examined whether collegiate physical education (PE) teachers' autonomy support versus control would relate to college students' ...wellness, knowledge, performance, and intentions to persist at physical activity beyond the PE classes. The mediating roles of students' basic psychological need satisfaction and need frustration as well as their types of motivation (autonomous and controlled) were also modeled.
Cross-sectional study.
One hundred and forty college students (Mage = 21.69, SD = 1.89) in PE classes completed questionnaires measuring their perceptions of PE teachers' autonomy support and control, as well as their own basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration and their autonomous and controlled motivation. The student outcomes were self-reports of the students' wellness (i.e., well-being and ill-being), teacher-administered tests of knowledge, teacher ratings of performance, and students' self-reports of intentions to persist at physical activity in the future.
Students' perceptions of teachers' autonomy support were positively associated with each of the positive student outcomes. Students' perceptions of teachers' control were related to students' well-being (negatively), knowledge (negatively), and ill-being (positively). Students' experiences of psychological need satisfaction were significantly positively related to their autonomous motivation and marginally to their controlled motivation. Their experiences of need frustration were related only positively to controlled motivation. As expected, path analyses showed that perceived autonomy support was positively related to the positive outcomes via need satisfaction and frustration and autonomous motivation, and that perceptions of teachers' control were related to students' ill-being (positively) and knowledge (negatively) through need frustration.
Consistent with SDT, the findings suggest that teachers' autonomy support is important for student's psychological need satisfaction, type of motivation, and in turn the outcomes of well-being, knowledge, performance, and intention to persist in the domain of college PE programs. Practical and theoretical implications, along with limitations and future research suggestions are discussed.
•Teachers' autonomy support was positively associated with college physical education students' positive outcomes.•Need satisfaction, and autonomous motivation mediated the associations between autonomy support and wellness, knowledge, performance, and intention to continue.•Teachers' controlling behaviors were negatively related to students' positive affect and knowledge, and positively associated with need frustration and negative affect.•Need frustration mediated the positive association between controlling behaviors and negative affect.
In two experimentally-based and longitudinally-designed studies, secondary-level PE teachers were randomly assigned to participate or not in a new intervention to help them learn all of the ...following: support autonomy, provide structure, and provide structure in an autonomy-supportive way. In Study 1, teachers who participated in the intervention showed longitudinal gains in all five hypothesized teacher benefits (e.g., teaching efficacy, job satisfaction). In Study 2, students of teachers who participated in the intervention showed longitudinal gains in all four hypothesized student benefits (e.g., classroom engagement, skill development). Overall, teachers and students benefited after teachers provided structure in an autonomy-supportive way.
•Teachers learned how to support autonomy, provide structure, and provide structure in an autonomy-supportive way.•Two intervention studies used an experimental, longitudinal research design.•In Study 1, teacher participation in the intervention produced multiple teacher benefits.•In Study 2, teacher participation in the intervention produced multiple student benefits.
Teachers' autonomy support (AS) in physical education (PE) has positive effects on students' affective and behavioral outcomes in PE. Even though the existence of three different dimensions of AS, ...namely cognitive, organizational and procedural AS has been suggested in educational settings, there is a lack of multidimensional instruments for the assessment of autonomy-supportive teaching in PE. The aim of this study was to validate the German Multi-Dimensional Perceived Autonomy Support Scale for Physical Education (MD-PASS-PE). The sample comprised 1030 students of grades 6 through 10. Internal consistency was used to test the reliability of the assumed subscales. Factorial validity and measurement invariance across gender and age were examined by confirmatory factor analyses. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate criterion validity. The subscales exhibited acceptable to good internal consistency. The assumed three-factor structure was confirmed within a bi-factor model including a general factor and three specific group factors. Results strongly supported measurement invariance across gender while tentatively suggesting measurement invariance across age. Criterion validity was supported as the MD-PASS-PE explained 15% and 14% of the variance in the constructs of self-efficacy and intrinsic value, respectively. The German MD-PASS-PE provides PE teachers with deeper insights into their autonomy-supportive teaching behavior, helping them to support their students' autonomy in a holistic way.
Family businesses represent 80% of global business structures, but the low rate of successful transgenerational succession can have drastic implications for employees and local economies. A 12-year ...longitudinal study of 89 Canadian family businesses revealed that successors’ confidence and perceptions of incumbent support predicted successor intrinsic motivation to take over the business, which in turn predicted whether the business was successfully transferred 12 years later. Incumbent support and intrinsic motivation mediated the relation between incumbent trust in the successor and successful business succession. This study demonstrates the dual importance of incumbent and successor psychological states in determining succession outcomes.
We adopted a dual-process model within a self-determination theory framework to investigate why students sometimes veer toward a longitudinal trajectory of rising classroom engagement during the ...semester and why they other times tend toward a trajectory of rising disengagement. Measures of perceived autonomy support, perceived teacher control, need satisfaction, need frustration, engagement, and disengagement were collected from 366 (174 females, 192 males) Korean high-school students using a three-wave longitudinal research design. Multi-level structural equation modeling analyses found that perceived autonomy support predicted longitudinal changes need satisfaction which predicted changes in engagement and also that perceived teacher control predicted longitudinal changes need frustration which predicted changes disengagement. Reciprocal effects also emerged in that extent of disengagement predicted both longitudinal increases in students' perceptions of teacher control and decreases in perceptions of teacher autonomy support. We conclude that students tend toward a semester-long trajectory of rising engagement when they perceive their teachers to be autonomy supportive and need satisfying while they tend toward a trajectory of rising disengagement when they perceive their teachers to be controlling and need frustrating.
•We investigated why students veer toward a trajectory of rising engagement.•Autonomy support and need satisfaction predicted rising classroom engagement.•We also investigated why students veer toward a trajectory of rising disengagement.•Teacher control and need frustration predicted rising classroom disengagement.•Reciprocal effects emerged; disengagement predicted changes in perceived motivating style.
The current study examined the associations among self-criticism, perceptions of autonomy support, and depression prior to and during the onset of the Covid pandemic. 283 students at a large Canadian ...university participated in a goal related study, and completed questionnaires assessing personality, autonomy support, and depressive symptoms starting in September of 2019 and ending in May of 2020. The results showed that self-criticism was associated with increases in depressive symptomatology, and that autonomy support was inversely associated with depression. The results also showed that autonomy support moderated the effect of self-criticism on depression such that individuals with higher baseline self-criticism who perceived high levels of autonomy support reported lower levels of depression during the beginning of the pandemic. These results confirm the deleterious impact of selfcriticism and the potential benefits of autonomy support. The presence of autonomy support appears to buffer those who are high in self-criticism from increased depressive symptoms. These results have important clinical implications, suggesting the need to address the perniciousness of self-criticism and the need to develop innovative ways to enhance the delivery of autonomy support.
This study examined a path model linking the providing and receiving of autonomy support to performance in intellectual group activities, through self-efficacy, social self-efficacy, and value, by ...comparing university students and working adults. Participants comprised 181 university students and 295 working adults who completed an online questionnaire consisting of psychological measurements. The students included 118 women and 63 men (first-year, 40; second-year, 40; third-year, 55; fourth-year, 46). The working adults were employed full-time and included 77 women, with an average of 12.68 years of employment. The hypothesized path model showed a good enough fit in the multi-group structural equation modeling analysis. The positive paths from providing of autonomy support to self-efficacy (student, β = 0.56; adults, β = 0.31), social self-efficacy (student, β = 0.37; adults, β = 0.37), and value (student, β = 0.39; adults, β = 0.33), and those from receiving autonomy support to social self-efficacy (student, β = 0.28; adults, β = 0.22) and value (student, β = 0.32; adults, β = 0.31), were significant for both groups. Moreover, significant positive paths were found from the receiving of autonomy support to self-efficacy (β = 0.29), and from values to performance levels (β = 0.18) in working adults. Positive paths from self-efficacy (student, β = 0.40; adults, β = 0.58) and social self-efficacy (β = 0.40) to performance levels were significant for both groups, and among university students, respectively. This suggests the possibility and necessity of implementing path model-based practices in universities and workplaces.
Although prior research has extensively documented the correlates of growth mindset, little is known about its antecedents in undergraduate students. Guided by the self-determination theory, the ...current study investigated the association of perceived autonomy support (i.e., parental autonomy support and teacher autonomy support) with growth mindset and assessed whether sense of coherence mediated this association. A total of 1,030 Chinese undergraduate students (62.4% females;
M
age
= 20.44,
SD
= 1.52) aged from 18 to 25 years were involved in this study; they were asked to fill out a set of self-reported questionnaires. Results of the structural equation modeling showed that sense of coherence fully mediated the association between parental autonomy support and growth mindset and between teacher autonomy support and growth mindset. More precisely, parental autonomy support and teacher autonomy support were each positively associated with sense of coherence, which in turn was positively related to growth mindset. The current findings further confirm the beneficial effect of autonomy support on individuals’ adaptive skills in a collective cultural context, suggesting that autonomy-supportive parents and teachers can contribute to undergraduate students’ growth mindset through the role of sense of coherence.
Growth language mindsets, the beliefs that language-learning ability can be cultivated through effort, are argued as a motivational resource that guides learners to focus on improvement and learning ...processes. However, little is known about how classroom learning contexts predict predict language-mindsets, and whether language-mindsets are linked to learners' competence development and language use in a language classroom. In this study, we recruited 392 university-level English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students in Iran and examined (a) how learners' perceptions of their teacher's autonomy support predict their language-mindsets, and (b) whether language-mindsets in turn predict learners' perceptions of communicative competence and willingness to communicate (WTC). Path analyses demonstrated that growth language-mindsets mediated the link of autonomy support on communicative competence and WTC. Students who perceived their teachers to be more autonomy-supportive were more likely to endorse growth (vs. fixed) language-mindsets, and thereby feeling more competent and being more willing to use English in the classroom. This study highlights the importance of growth mindsets in EFL classrooms and provides practical implications for fostering growth mindsets with autonomy-supporting strategies.
•Autonomy support predicts language mindsets.•Growth language-mindsets mediated the link of autonomy support on communicative competence and WTC.•Growth mindsets can be fostered using autonomy supportive strategies.
Carefully designed interventions consistently help K-12 teachers learn how to implement a more autonomy-supportive classroom motivating style. In the present study, we investigated what resources ...teachers acquired during these interventions that explained why they are so able to successfully upgrade the quality of their motivating style. We randomly assigned 91 full-time teachers to participate or not in a year-long autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP), and we longitudinally assessed autonomy support and three hypothesized mediating resources—gains in need satisfaction during teaching, gains in teaching efficacy, and a greater adoption of intrinsic instructional goals. The ASIP did increase teachers’ autonomy support, as expected, and the two resources that explained this professional developmental achievement were intervention-enabled gains in teaching efficacy and intrinsic instructional goals.
•Post-intervention, teachers' motivating style became more autonomy supportive.•During the intervention, teachers developed three personal-professional resources.•Intervention-enabled gains in teaching efficacy explained greater autonomy support.•Intervention-enabled gains in intrinsic goals explained greater autonomy support.
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