A Study On Senior High School English Teachers’ Autonomy-Supportive Behaviors To Students Based On Self-Determination Theory

This study investigates English teachers’ autonomy support to students in the classroom. Autonomy support refers to someone’s supportive behaviors on other people’s autonomy. This term derived from Self-Determination Theory(SDT), which was proposed by Deci and Ryan in 1980 s. It was first proposed in the field of psychology, and was gradually applied to other areas like education. Teachers’ autonomy support gains increasing attention by researchers abroad. But in China, relevant studies are still less. According to The Basic Education Curriculum Reform Outline, which was enacted by the Ministry of Education in 2001, training students’ autonomy in learning was an important reform goal. So teachers’ autonomy support plays a major role in this process. Besides, English is an important subject in senior high school. Improving students’ autonomy in English learning is a serious problem to be solved. So in this study, the researcher conducted a study on English teachers’ autonomy-supportive behaviors based on SDT.To investigate English teachers’ autonomy-supportive behaviors, three research questions are put forward in this study:(1) What do the teachers think of their autonomy-supportive behaviors to students in English class?(2) What are their autonomy-supportive behaviors to students in practice?(3) Are there differences between teachers’ self perception and the practice of autonomy-supportive behaviors to students in English classes? If there are, why there exist the differences? To answer these questions, 184 senior high school English teachers are asked to participate in this study. The instruments in this study include questionnaire, interview and video recording. The questionnaire is used to investigate English teachers’ perception of their autonomy-supportive behaviors in class. And the video recordings are used to record English teachers autonomy-supportive behaviors in practice. The data of the questionnaire was analyzed through SPSS 16.0. The video recordings were transcribed and coded by the researcher. Through comparison, differences between English teachers’ perceived autonomy-supportive behaviors and that in practice are found out by the researcher. The interview is conducted among the English teachers who were in the video recordings to find out the reasons of the differences.From this study, three major findings can be summarized:(1) In English teachers’ perception, they adopt more autonomy-supportive behaviors than autonomy-controlling behaviors in class. And they perceived that the most commonly used autonomy-supportive behavior is fostering students’ understanding and interest. The second commonly used autonomy-supportive behavior is allowing students’ criticism and independent thinking. And the behavior of providing choice is the least perceived form of autonomy-supportive behaviors. For autonomy-controlling behaviors, English teachers perceived that the most commonly used form is intruding. And the behavior of suppressing students’ criticism and independent opinions is perceived as the least used form of autonomy-controlling behaviors in class.(2) In practice, English teachers adopt more autonomy-supportive behaviors than autonomy-controlling behaviors. As for autonomy-supportive behaviors, the most commonly used form in practice is fostering students’ understanding and interest. The behavior of providing choice and the behavior of allowing students’ criticism and independent thinking are similar to each other, but they are much less than the behavior of fostering students’ understanding and interest. As for autonomy-controlling behaviors, the most commonly used form is intruding, and the frequency of suppressing students’ criticism and independent thinking is relatively less but similar to intruding.(3) The main difference between English teachers’ perceived autonomy-supportive behaviors and that in practice is that English teachers perceived that they adopt more behaviors of allowing students’ criticism and independent thinking, but in practice, they adopt more behaviors of suppressing students’ criticism and independent thinking than they perceived. The reasons can be summarized into four aspects: teachers’ personality characteristics, teachers’ personal ability, teachers’ understanding of the students and teachers’ pressure.This study has some implications. For English teachers, it can arouse their attention on their autonomy-supportive behaviors in class, and targets their efforts to improve their autonomy-supportive behaviors. For education administrators, this study provides them some feasible measures to improve teachers’ ability to support students’ learning autonomy, for example, organizing some training courses for teachers on autonomy support. For researchers in the field of education, especially for Chinese researchers, this study provides a new research focus--teachers’ autonomy support. It is hoped that this preliminary study can arouse more and more Chinese researchers’ attention and interest in this field.