What Children’s Immediate Reactions to Parental Autonomy Support Say

• In Event: Parental Support of Engagement and Achievement: Mediating, Interactive, and Longitudinal Associations

Abstract

Purposes

This presentation will review the literature and recent studies suggesting that observations of children’s reactions to parental autonomy support in the educational realm provide insight that would be missed by administering psychological questionnaires alone.

Theoretical framework

Parental involvement is crucial for children’s educational development (e.g., Powell, Son, File & Froiland, 2012); however, controlling parental involvement often backfires by promoting negative emotions, reducing intrinsic motivation and elevating perfectionism (Grolnick, Gurland, DeCourcey & Jacob, 2002; Kenny-Benson & Pomerantz, 2005). On the other hand, parental autonomy support helps children develop positive emotions and intrinsic motivation to learn (Froiland, 2011). However, the relation between parental autonomy support and children’s motivational outcomes is usually measured by questionnaires. Although these questionnaires are highly valuable, there is the potential for observations of children’s reactions to autonomy support to provide additional important information.

Modes of Inquiry

In a recent qualitative study, parents were asked to journal instances in which they applied aspects of autonomy supportive communication (when discussing school or learning) and how their children immediately responded.

Results

Four important themes were identified, such as parents generalizing the autonomy supportive style to broad aspects of learning (e.g., engaging with museum exhibits on vacation, learning how to play a musical instrument, and selecting books to purchase), which led to children engaging more richly with diverse learning opportunities. Another theme entailed very specific strongly positive responses to parental autonomy support that were unique for each parent-child dyad. A third theme involved instances in which parents thought that using a reward system was autonomy supportive. In those instances, children were described as getting their work done, but no signs of zeal or enjoyment were mentioned.

Scientific significance

Although autonomous motivation is a deeply psychological construct and not easy to observe, there is the potential for parents and psychologists to observe signs of autonomous motivation to learn. Narrative observations of children’s reactions to autonomy support via parent journals could be used to measure parents’ implementation of autonomy supportive techniques during future parent interventions, providing important information that could be used to acknowledge good implementation and provide informational feedback about misapplications.

Author

• John M. Froiland, University of Northern Colorado