The relationship between teachers' autonomy support and students' intrinsic motivation and academic achievement in middle grades mathematics: A self-determination theory perspective

Research within self-determination theory (SDT) suggests that students benefit when teachers support their autonomy. While a large body of research exists regarding the relationship between SDT and positive educational outcomes, there is a paucity of research concerning the relationship between autonomy-supportive instruction and adolescent learning in a middle school mathematics setting. This study applied SDT to investigate the relationship between seventh grade students' (N = 362) perceptions of their math teacher's autonomy support and their intrinsic motivation and academic achievement in prealgebra. Participants were drawn from an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse suburban public middle school in the southeastern United States and completed three self-report questionnaires to assess (a) their prealgebra teacher's autonomy support; (b) their interest/enjoyment, value/usefulness, pressure/tension, and perceived competence in prealgebra; and (c) their self-determined academic motivation.;Hierarchical multiple regression identified the most parsimonious model of teacher autonomy support. Interest/enjoyment significantly predicted teacher autonomy support and explained the greatest amount of unique variance, followed by value/usefulness and perceived competence. Pressure/tension, relative autonomy, and academic achievement were unrelated to teacher autonomy support at every level of the hierarchical regression, although pressure/tension and relative autonomy were significantly related to teacher autonomy support outside of the regression model as bivariate correlations. Academic achievement was unrelated to teacher autonomy support, but it was significantly related to pressure tension and perceived competence as bivariate correlations.;This study found evidence to support the SDT claim that motivation lies upon a continuum of relative autonomy in which some forms of motivation are more autonomous and self-determined than others. Students with a more autonomous orientation for learning experienced less pressure and tension and greater interest/enjoyment, value/usefulness, perceived competence, and academic achievement than participants who had less self-determined academic motivation. Teacher autonomy support was more closely related to intrinsic motivation and identified regulation than it was to introjected regulation and external regulation. The finding that teacher autonomy support accounted for the greatest amount of unique variance in the regression model and was the most powerful predictor of middle school students' intrinsic motivation in mathematics holds important implications for theory and practice.