Students' Agentic Engagement Increases Teachers' Autonomy Support: The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: Advances in Self-Determination Theory Research

Abstract

Using self-determination theory, this research investigated the dialectical influence between teachers and students—namely, how teachers’ motivating-style enhances students’ engagement-disengagement and how students’ engagement-disengagement, in turn, enhances teachers’ motivating-style. Using a classroom-based longitudinal research design, 336 university students at a private university in Lima (Peru) completed measures of their 22 teachers’ motivating-style and their own class-specific behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagement at the beginning (T1) and end (T2) of the academic semester. We used multi-level structural equation modeling analyses. As expected, early-semester T1 perceived autonomy-support predicted late-semester T2 increases in all four aspects of students’ engagement and perceived controlling-teaching predicted all four aspects of late-semester disengagement. More importantly, only early-semester agentic engagement predicted longitudinal increases in perceived autonomy-supportive teaching.

Authors

• Lennia Matos, The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

• Johnmarshall Reeve, Korea University

• Dora Herrera, The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

• Mary Claux, The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru