This article describes the development and validation of an instrument to assess adults' orientations toward control versus autonomy in their interactions with children. The 32-item, paper-and-pencil measure has four subscales that are combined to provide an overall orientation. The responses from 68 teachers had a good range and were internally consistent and temporally stable. Further, the measure was shown to be externally valid in that teachers from Grades 4 through 6 who were more autonomy oriented on the measure were rated as such by their students, and more importantly, the children of the autonomy-oriented teachers were more intrinsically motivated and had higher self-esteem than children of the teachers who were more control oriented.It is widely believed that intrinsically motivated, self-directed learning is the ideal model for education. Proponents of this view (e.g., Bruner, 1962) suggest that when students learn out of curiosity and the desire for challenge, they are more involved in and satisfied with the learning and they understand and can integrate the material more fully.Recent research (see Deci & Ryan, 1980) indicating that various external events such as rewards, constraints, and communications can undermine people's intrinsic motivation for a target activity with which the events are associated raises serious questions about how to design learning environments that can use the needed rewards and structures without undermining students' intrinsic motivation.
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