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Building Autonomous Learners pp 129–152Cite as

Autonomy-Supportive Teaching: What It Is, How to Do It

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Abstract

Autonomy-supportive teaching strongly predicts positive functioning in both the students who receive autonomy support and the teachers who give it. Recognizing this, the present paper provides conceptual and operational definitions of autonomy support (to explain what it is) and offers step-by-step guidelines of how to put it into practice during classroom instruction (to explain how to do it). The focus is on the following six empirically validated autonomy-supportive instructional behaviors that, together, constitute the autonomy-supportive motivating style: take the students’ perspective, vitalize inner motivational resources, provide explanatory rationales, acknowledge and accept negative affect, rely on informational and nonpressuring language, and display patience. For each act of instruction, I define what it is, articulate when it is most needed during instruction, explain why it is educationally important, and provide examples and recommendations of how to put it into practice.

Keywords

  • Negative Affect
  • Autonomy Support
  • Perspective Taking
  • Harmonious Passion
  • Teaching Efficacy

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Korea University, Seoul, Korea

    Johnmarshall Reeve

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  1. Johnmarshall Reeve
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Inst of Edu, Singapore, Singapore

    Woon Chia Liu

  2. National Inst of Edu, Singapore, Singapore

    John Chee Keng Wang

  3. Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia

    Richard M. Ryan

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Reeve, J. (2016). Autonomy-Supportive Teaching: What It Is, How to Do It. In: Liu, W., Wang, J., Ryan, R. (eds) Building Autonomous Learners. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-630-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-630-0_7

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