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We investigated 2 engagement-fostering aspects of teachers' instructional styles-autonomy support and structure-and hypothesized that students' engagement would be highest when teachers provided high levels of both. Trained observers rated teachers' instructional styles and students' behavioral engagement in 133 public high school classrooms in the Midwest, and 1,584 students in Grades 9 -11 reported their subjective engagement. Correlational and hierarchical linear modeling analyses showed 3 results: (a) Autonomy support and structure were positively correlated, (b) autonomy support and structure both predicted students' behavioral engagement, and (c) only autonomy support was a unique predictor of students' self-reported engagement. We discuss, first, how these findings help illuminate the relations between autonomy support and structure as 2 complementary, rather than antagonistic or curvilinear, engagement-fostering aspects of teachers' instructional styles and, second, the somewhat different results obtained for the behavioral versus self-report measures of students' classroom engagement.

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Teachers with an autonomy-supportive style rely on different instructional behaviors to motivate their students than do teachers with a controlling style. In the present investigation, the authors tested which of these instructional behaviors actually correlated positively or negatively with students' autonomy. The authors used Deci, Spiegel, Ryan, Koestner, & Kauffman's (1982) teacher-student laboratory paradigm to randomly assign 72 pairs of same-sex preservice teachers into the role of either teacher or student. From videotapes of the 10-min instructional episode, raters scored 11 hypothesized autonomy-supportive behaviors and 10 hypothesized controlling behaviors. Correlational analyses confirmed that students perceived the functional significance of 8 instructional behaviors as autonomy supports and 6 instructional behaviors as autonomy thwarts. The discussion focuses on the interpretation and classroom implications of these data.

Watch as a student engages herself in a learning activity. What catches your eye? What really matters in terms of whether she will learn something new or develop her skills? What unseen motivational processes contribute to and explain her attention, effort, emotionality, strategic thinking, and sense of initiative and agency? As you watch the ebb and fl ow of her engagement, can 7 AbstractThis chapter pursues three goals. First, it overviews self-determination theory (SDT). SDT is a macrotheory of motivation comprised of fi ve interrelated minitheories-basic needs theory, organismic integration theory, goal contents theory, cognitive evaluation theory, and causality orientations theory. Each minitheory was created to explain specifi c motivational phenomena and to address specifi c research questions. Second, the chapter uses the student-teacher dialectical framework within SDT to explain how classroom conditions sometimes support but other times neglect and frustrate students' motivation, engagement, and positive classroom functioning. Third, the chapter highlights student engagement. In doing so, it overviews recent classroom-based, longitudinally designed research to reveal three new and important functions of student engagement-namely, that student engagement fully mediates and explains the motivation-toachievement relation, that changes in engagement produce changes in the learning environment, and that changes in engagement produce changes in motivation, as students' behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagements represent actions taken not only to learn but also to meet psychological needs. The chapter concludes with implications for teachers and with suggestions for future research.

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The present study introduced "agentic engagement" as a newly proposed student-initiated pathway to greater achievement and greater motivational support. Study 1 developed the brief, construct-congruent, and psychometrically strong Agentic Engagement Scale. Study 2 provided evidence for the scale's construct and predictive validity, as scores correlated with measures of agentic motivation and explained independent variance in course-specific achievement not otherwise attributable to students' behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Study 3 showed how agentically engaged students create motivationally supportive learning environments for themselves. Measures of agentic engagement and teacher-provided autonomy support were collected from 302 middle-school students in a 3-wave longitudinal research design. Multilevel structural equation modeling showed that (a) initial levels of students' agentic engagement predicted longitudinal changes in midsemester perceived autonomy support and (b) early-semester changes in agentic engagement predicted longitudinal changes in latesemester autonomy support. Overall, these studies show how agentic engagement functions as a proactive, intentional, collaborative, and constructive student-initiated pathway to greater achievement (Study 2) and motivational support (Study 3).

The twofold purpose of the present study was, first, to determine whether training intervention programs designed to help people support the autonomy of others are effective and, second, to identify the set of conditions that allowed these interventions to be most effective. A meta-analysis of the findings from 19 studies with 20 effect sizes showed that the training programs were, overall, effective with a weighted effect size of 0.63. Moderator analyses of the overall effect size showed that the relatively more effective intervention programs were structured in ways that trained multiple elements of autonomy support and were presented in relatively brief (1-3 h) sessions in a laboratory training setting that focused on skill-based activities and utilized multiple types of media to deliver its content. Furthermore, relatively effective intervention programs were offered to teachers (rather than to other professionals), trainees (rather than to experienced professionals), and individuals with an autonomy (rather than a control) causality orientation. Though the small number of included studies warrants caution, results generally affirmed the effectiveness of autonomy-supportive training programs and identified the conditions under which future programs can be designed to be highly effective.According to self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci 2000), people function positively when others support their autonomy rather than control their behavior. Because the benefits from autonomy support have been found to be both widespread and predictive of important outcomes (discussed below), researchers and practitioners alike have asked whether or not people such as