Towards understanding student perceptions of supportive teaching behaviour
摘要
Creating conducive learning environments that cater to students’ basic psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness—is important for enhancing student engagement and motivation, according to self-determination theory. Consequently, it is crucial to understanding how teaching behaviours, viewed as indicators of psychosocial learning environments, meet students’ learning needs. However, this area of research is underexplored in the learning environments research. This study aims to identify specific teaching behaviour domains, as perceived by students, which align with students’ basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. We used an open-ended questionnaire distributed to 277 students from three secondary schools in the north of the Netherlands. The qualitative analysis revealed 11 teaching behaviour domains associated with student needs. We found that student responses aligned with six established effective teaching behaviour domains. Student responses also revealed five additional domains related to teacher characteristics and school learning environments. Based on student perceptions, our study has not only validated six established domains of effective teaching behaviour but also brought to light five new domains, expanding the scope of how teaching behaviours are perceived in learning environments. This study opens an opportunity for teachers to tailor their teaching to meet the needs and expectations of the students and contributes to shed light on improving the quality of learning environments.