Unequal Support for High-Quality Motivation: Investigating Cross-Context Inequality in Teachers' Suggested Rationales for Learning Math

• In Event: How Context and Learning Mindsets Advance Academic Outcomes: Findings from National Study of Learning Mindsets

Abstract

Objectives:
The present study investigates cross-context inequalities in teachers’ provision of support for high-quality motivation to learn by way of suggested rationales for learning.
Perspectives or theoretical framework:
Adopting the perspective of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), we argue that the quality of students’ motivation to learn in response to receiving a rationale for learning depends upon the degree to which the rationale’s content helps them perceive learning as an autonomously-motivated behavior (Vansteenkiste et al., 2018). Teachers may provide autonomy-supportive rationales for learning at uneven rates depending upon the school context in which they are embedded. Indeed, educators’ general use of autonomy-supportive practices has been shown to vary with their belief that a student is willing and able to successfully regulate learning (Sarrazin, Tessier, Pelletier, Trouilloud, & Chanal, 2006). Thus, we hypothesized that teachers’ provision of autonomy-supportive rationales might vary by the proportion of students in their school who belong to racial/ethnic groups stereotyped as being more or less capable of successful learning in a given domain.
Data and Methods:
Nearly 290 9th-grade math teachers (63% female, 84% White; N = 72 U.S. regular public schools) who were surveyed as part of the National Study of Learning Mindsets responded to an open-ended prompt asking what they would say to motivate a hypothetical student who had doubts about the purpose and relevance of math (see Appendix). Three independent coders conducted a qualitative content analysis of teachers’ responses, categorizing them based on the presence or absence of three rationales for learning (in order of proposed autonomy-supportiveness; see Table 1): Real-World Utility, Related to Interests, and Supports Intellectual Growth. Multilevel modeling controlled for teacher-level demographics and school-level prior achievement of students participating in the National Study.
Results:
Table 2 summarizes the distribution of gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic composition across schools. The ICCs in Table 3 shows that the majority of variation in all three coded rationales was explained by the fact that teachers were nested in different schools. Table 4 shows that, as expected, teachers were significantly more likely to give the hypothetical student the two most autonomy-supportive rationales (Related to Interests and Supports Intellectual Growth) in schools where the majority of participating students were White. Additionally, teachers were significantly less likely to offer the least autonomy-supportive rationale (Real-World Utility) in schools where more participating students identified as Asian. Contrary to expectations, teachers were more likely to offer all three rationales for learning in schools where more students identified as non-White Hispanic.
Significance:
This study shows that the level of support for high-quality motivation that teachers provide students by way of the content of rationales for learning is predicted by the racial/ethnic composition of a school’s students. To the extent that teachers’ hypothetical rationale is indicative of the type of rationales they offer in real life, these findings suggest that students in different racial school contexts are having unequal opportunities to experience learning as volitional. Future research should explore potentially malleable teacher beliefs that influence the content of suggested rationales for learning.

Authors

• Melanie Gonzalez, The University of Texas at Austin

• David Yeager, The University of Texas at Austin