Teacher support, student motivation, student need satisfaction, and college teacher course evaluations: testing a sequential path model

Abstract

Self-determination theory posits that individuals who have basic psychological needs satisfied while engaging in an activity will be more likely to value and persist in that activity. Scholars in this area have also posited that autonomy-supportive social contexts are top-down determinants of individual need satisfaction. To understand better the progression from social to motivational to outcome variables, we tested a four-step path model within a classroom setting. Data were collected from 220 students in an introductory journalism course, which was subdivided into 14 lab sections. Students were surveyed regarding their feelings about the course, the autonomy support of the instructor, the motivation they felt to engage in the course, and the levels of need satisfaction they experienced. Theoretically-guided structural equation modeling produced a best-fitting model in which teacher autonomy support predicted more selfdetermined student motivation, which along with teacher autonomy support predicted greater student psychological need satisfaction, which led finally to higher predicted course grades and higher teacher-course evaluations. Overall, the results replicate and significantly extend previous findings regarding need satisfaction and teacher-course evaluations. Implications for pedagogy and educational interventions are discussed.

An Examination of Motivation Model Components in Face-to-Face and Online Instruction

“…Examples of whether or not instructors care about students' academic success include things such as caring about how much they learned, wanting them to do well in the course, enjoying the act of helping them learn, and wanting them to do their best work. This finding is consistent with the results of Filak and Sheldon (2008) who reported that the construct "relatedness" (which measured a combination of instructor academic and personal caring) was the best predictor of instructor ratings.…”

“…These results are consistent with self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986(Bandura, , 1997, which predicts that students' judgments of their capabilities are related to their performance. Other studies have also documented that students' perceptions of competence explain the most variance in their achievement (Filak & Sheldon, 2008;Gao & Xiang, 2008).…”

“…Although some instructors might deny that instructor and course ratings are critical to their instructional design, it is difficult to argue that instructor and course ratings are unimportant given that many institutions use them as the primary measure of teaching effectiveness for decisions related to promotion, tenure, and merit pay. Because of the importance of student effort, student achievement, instructor ratings, and course ratings, researchers have examined the impacts of psychological constructs on these outcomes (e.g., Caulfield, 2010;Faye & Sharpe, 2008;Filak & Sheldon, 2008;Remedios & Lieberman, 2008). The aim of this study was to extend this area of research by examining a broader set of psychological constructs within the context of a traditional face-to-face course and an online course.…”

Understanding computer-mediated communication attributes and life satisfaction from the perspectives of uses and gratifications and self-determination

“…Extant evidence has been found from individualistic (e.g., the United States; S ßims ßek & Koydemir, 2013, Belgium; Luyckx, Vansteenkiste, Goossens, & Duriez, 2009) to collectivistic cultures (e.g., South Korea; Jang et al, 2009, Russia;Lynch et al, 2009, and China;Vansteenkiste et al, 2006) from interpersonal (Sheldon & Gunz, 2009) to intra-individual levels (Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, & Ryan, 2000), and from personal (La Guardia & Patrick, 2008;Patrick, Knee, Canevello, & Lonsbary, 2007) to public domains (Deci et al, 2001;Filak & Sheldon, 2008;Leversen, Danielsen, Birkeland, & Samdal, 2012;Lonsdale, Hodge, & Rose, 2009).…”

Science adjustment, parental and teacher autonomy support and the cognitive orientation of science students

“…Studies have shown that teachers' autonomy support also positively influences students' motivation, course grades, feelings of competence, and actual performance in class (Filak & Sheldon, 2008;Grolnick & Ryan, 1989;Niemiec & Ryan, 2009;Roth, Assor, Kanat-4 Maymon, & Kaplan, 2007;Ryan & Connell, 1989). By contrast, negative motivational effects have been observed when teachers have exhibited various forms of controlling behavior (Assor, Kaplan, Kanat-Maymon, & Roth, 2005;Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004).…”