When parental education level matters: Motivating low-SES adolescents through teacher autonomy support

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Agency, Resilience, and Motivation: Strategic Responses to Barriers in Education

Abstract

Teacher autonomy support (TAS) does not uniformly boost student motivation, highlighting the need for context-sensitive approaches. We examined how TAS (indicated by perspective-taking, interest-sharing, value-sharing) interacted with parental education and student achievement level to affect students’ motivation. We surveyed 520 low-socioeconomic-status adolescents in China (50.19% girls). Fixed-effects models revealed nuanced effects: (1) value-sharing reduced amotivation only for students whose parents completed junior high education, (2) perspective-taking more strongly enhanced intrinsic motivation for lower-performing students, (3) value-sharing backfired for bottom-quartile students, exacerbating amotivation. Findings underscore the importance of tailoring TAS strategies to familial and individual differences, with implications for mitigating educational inequities.

Authors

• Zhe He, Beijing Normal University

• Ning Ren, The Chinese University of Hong Kong