Effects of need supportive teaching on early adolescents’ motivation and engagement: A review of the literature

In the present paper we systematically review the corpus of evidence on the effects of need supportive teaching on early adolescents’ motivation and engagement for school. Based on Self-Determination Theory, we define need supportive teaching in terms of teachers’ provision of autonomy support, structure, and involvement. The results of an in-depth descriptive analysis of 71 empirical studies that were conducted since 1990 show a clear positive association between need supportive teaching and students’ motivation and engagement, whereas evidence concerning specific components of need supportive teaching is less conclusive. Furthermore, we find that in most of the selected studies student perceptions were used to measure need supportive teaching. In the small body of studies using observations or teacher perceptions, we find much smaller or even no associations with students’ motivation and engagement.

• Review of effects of teachers’ autonomy support, structure, and involvement on students’ motivation and engagement.
• We systematically selected 71 empirical studies that were conducted among early adolescents since 1990.
• Our results univocally show a positive association of need supportive teaching with students’ motivation and engagement.
• Most studies use student perceptions to measure need supportive teaching, instead of observations or teacher perceptions.
• Evidence from studies on observed, teacher perceived, or components of need supportive teaching is less conclusive.