Autonomy-supportive teaching: Its malleability, benefits, and potential to improve educational practice

Abstract

Autonomy-supportive teaching is the adoption of a student-focused attitude and an understanding interpersonal tone that enables the skillful enactment of seven autonomy-satisfying instructional behaviors to serve two purposes—support intrinsic motivation and support internalization. Using self-determination theory principles and empirical findings, researchers have developed and implemented numerous teacher-focused and methodologically-rigorous interventions to provide teachers with the professional developmental experience they need to learn how to become more autonomy supportive. The findings from 51 autonomy-supportive teaching interventions (including 38 randomized control trials) collectively show that (1) teachers can learn how to become more autonomy supportive during instruction (autonomy-supportive teaching is malleable) and, once learned, (2) this greater autonomy-supportive teaching produces a wide range of educationally important student, teacher, and classroom climate benefits (autonomy-supportive teaching is beneficial). Recognizing this, the article shows how the recent surge in autonomy-supportive intervention research has advanced the conceptual understanding of the nature of autonomy-supportive teaching and clarified its potential to improve educational practice.