On academic wellbeing
A more granular look at how effective teaching supports motivation
I’ve been talking a big game over on Twitter about how researchers should offer translations of how their work contributes to teaching and learning. Not only is it a good intellectual exercise, but it’s a good way to promote useful ideas to the people who need them—teachers.
I’ve been writing a chapter for my PhD that’s been a game-changer for shifting my understanding of basic human needs and motivation. Carl Hendrick has written about how the field has been stuck in the era of leg-warmers and shell suits for too long. He points out that most of the research is correlational (it is), and therefore gives us little insight into how to make it happen in the classroom.
There are researchers in the field who have moved on from this. For example, research into teacher motivating styles is pretty specific about the teacher behaviours that are conducive to student motivation. Of course, there is no silver bullet; we can’t make students motivated, but we can provide the conditions that enable them to flourish.
Self-determination theory is a cornerstone of motivation research, which suggests that humans are motivated when three basic needs are met: autonomy (the ability to act willingly and with freedom), competence (feeling capable), and relatedness (feeling connected to others, in other words, a sense of belonging).
Teachers can support needs for autonomy by providing choice, offering rationales for the learning, and taking the student’s perspective. Structure, on the other hand, includes clear instructions, scaffolding, worked examples, and guided practice.
For a long time, the research has held up the basic human need for autonomy as the holy grail. Researchers have elevated choice and freedom as an end-goal of motivation, which it is, but we don’t get there by magic. More recently, researchers have looked more closely at teacher-provided structure, in other words, the kinds of practices you would see in an explicit classroom; even more recently, they’ve been studied in combination with autonomy support.
Now we are moving closer to a silver bullet. It turns out structure and autonomy support are a killer combination. They’re not antagonistic, as some may have you believe; in fact, they represent the gradual release of responsibility offered by explicit teaching perfectly. Researchers have even trained teachers in how to provide structure in an autonomy supportive way, for example by taking the student’s perspective, offering choice where possible, and providing rationales for the learning and its importance.
Even more recently, motivation theory has moved towards a more fine-grained analysis. The circumplex model (Aelterman et al., 2019) maps teacher behaviours in a circle to show how styles can blend and overlap. Styles that are next to each other (like attuning and guiding) often work well together, while those on opposite sides (like attuning and domineering) tend not to co-occur. The circular structure helps explain why effective teachers don’t just pick a style; they adapt, combine, and shift depending on context.
The circumplex maps teacher styles on two axes: the horizontal axis shows how much they support (or thwart) student needs, and the vertical axis shows how directive the teacher is. These quadrants represent teaching styles characterised by autonomy support, structure, control and chaos as we move clockwise around the circumplex.
As with earlier research, the combination of autonomy support and structure is most powerfully motivating, specifically attuning and guiding practices. Chaos is an area that the research has largely neglected, but it will come as no surprise that combinations of abandoning and domineering are the most need-thwarting.
Here’s my quick and dirty summary of the kinds of behaviours we would see for each of the eight subareas, clockwise from participative.
Participative. Offering choice and freedom, seeking student input into lessons, and asking students’ opinions about what consequences are appropriate for misbehaviour.
Attuning. Acknowledging the student’s perspective when they express negative feelings about the learning, providing rationales for why the learning is important.
Guiding. Being responsive to student needs, providing feedback on what to improve and how, and providing steps that lead the student to independence.
Clarifying. Communicating expectations, providing a clear pathway through the learning, and giving clear and unambiguous instructions.
Demanding. Making procedures, duties and expectations clear with no tolerance for contradiction and giving sanctions for non-compliance.
Domineering. Using shouting, shame, guilt, insults and personal attacks to force compliance.
Abandoning. Leaving students to their own devices with the view that students should be independent, even when support is called for.
Awaiting. Allowing the learning to unfold according to student initiative, also identifiable by a lack of planning and organisation.
When we connect all the dots in the research, here are my takeaways about how it might apply in reality.
Teachers use a range of styles in combination.
Effective practices tend to cluster together. We know that effective teachers tend to select behaviours from the structured and autonomy-supportive quadrants. They’re not antagonistic. This bodes well for explicit teaching, which suffers from a reputation for being too structure-dominant.
A fascinating further avenue for research is when teachers choose which styles, perhaps based on classroom observations. This kind of research is in short supply in motivation, reflecting Carl’s criticism. For example, is a more clarifying style observable at the beginning of the lesson, and guiding toward the end, or at the start of a scheme of work versus its conclusion?
Context can give us insight.
A lot of the research into motivation and teaching is in the area of PDHPE and sport. Perhaps it’s because of the nature of the subject, which can be quite personal and at the same time, a sloppily thrown javelin can have obvious repercussions. Coaches of team sports are perceived to be more clarifying and demanding than their counterparts in individual sports. Group size, therefore, has to be a pragmatic consideration, influencing the thousands of decisions teachers make each day.
Structure has an image problem.
Interestingly, teachers often see their own clarifying practices as bordering on control, yet students don’t seem to view them that way. In fact, teacher demands tend to have little effect on motivation or even cognitive load. Is it that teachers judge their use of structure harshly, preferring to think of themselves as student-centred? Or is it that students see an element of demand as normal and appropriate?
For the good of the many, choice might not be ideal.
Teachers will recognise this problem in the face of trying to accommodate the choices of 25 individuals rather than the needs of the many. As well as being almost impossible, the participative subarea sits next to awaiting, which is where many students can become overwhelmed in light of unconstrained choice, without the competence needed to back it up.
Chaos has been mostly ignored.
We have to ask why. One possibility is that researchers may be drawn to approaches that align with their own values, particularly those that emphasise student autonomy and low-directive styles. The strong focus on autonomy in the literature suggests this may have shaped the field’s research priorities. Many of the instructional behaviours align closely with inquiry learning, which, despite limited evidence of efficacy, holds a romantic position in the minds of many. Given that this quadrant is need-thwarting, it needs more attention.
Warm demand may be the sweet spot.
While guiding and attuning practices are the most optimally motivating, teacher clarity has a strong evidence base for outcomes. A lot of the clarifying and demanding teacher behaviours are reflected in the research into classroom management as being preventative. Explicit teaching likely does a fair amount of preventative work by providing structure and safety, making space for later student independence, opportunities for praise, and ultimately student autonomy.
Until recently, I wasn’t aware that it was Judith Kleinfeld who coined the phrase, “warm demand,” but in light of the circumplex, I can see how high expectations and making “demands” known in a warm and proactive way may be the sweet spot in creating the conditions for motivation and learning.
We need to stop thinking of teaching styles as fixed positions on a continuum. Effective teachers adapt and respond. They clarify when needed, they’re attuned to student needs, and they steer clear of chaos.
If we want to understand what motivates students, we need to move past the autonomy fixation. The circumplex isn’t so much a roadmap as a guide to effective instructional behaviours. We know a lot about which instructional practices lead to learning, and now we know those same practices lead to motivation and wellbeing.
If you want to know what academic wellbeing looks like in the classroom, you won’t get much closer than this.
Further reading:
Aelterman, N., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2023). Need-Supportive and Need-Thwarting Socialization: A Circumplex Approach. In R. M. Ryan (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Self-Determination Theory (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197600047.013.21
Aelterman, N., Vansteenkiste, M., Haerens, L., Soenens, B., Fontaine, J. R. J., & Reeve, J. (2019). Toward an integrative and fine-grained insight in motivating and demotivating teaching styles: The merits of a circumplex approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 497–521. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000293
Branko, V., Nathalie, A., Wim, B., Leen, A., Fanny, B., & Maarten, V. (2020). The role of teachers’ motivation and mindsets in predicting a (de)motivating teaching style in higher education: A circumplex approach. Motivation and Emotion, 44(2), 270–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-020-09827-5
Brophy, J. (2006). Observational Research on Generic Aspects of Classroom Teaching. In Handbook of educational psychology (pp. 755–780). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Coterón, J., Fernández-Caballero, J., Martín-Hoz, L., & Franco, E. (2024). The Interplay of Structuring and Controlling Teaching Styles in Physical Education and Its Impact on Students’ Motivation and Engagement. Behavioral Sciences, 14(9), 836. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14090836
Delrue, J., Reynders, B., Broek, G. V., Aelterman, N., De Backer, M., Decroos, S., De Muynck, G.-J., Fontaine, J., Fransen, K., Van Puyenbroeck, S., Haerens, L., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2019). Adopting a helicopter-perspective towards motivating and demotivating coaching: A circumplex approach. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 40, 110–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2018.08.008
Escriva-Boulley, G., Descas, E., Aelterman, N., Vansteenkiste, M., Van Doren, N., Lentillon-Kaestner, V., & Haerens, L. (2021). Adopting the Situation in School Questionnaire to Examine Physical Education Teachers’ Motivating and Demotivating Styles Using a Circumplex Approach. OSF. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/29afq
Evans, P., Vansteenkiste, M., Parker, P., Kingsford-Smith, A., & Zhou, S. (2024). Cognitive Load Theory and Its Relationships with Motivation: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 36(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09841-2
Kleinfeld, J. (1975). Effective Teachers of Eskimo and Indian Students. The School Review, 83(2), 301–344. https://doi.org/10.1086/443191
Marzano, R. J., Marzano, J. S., & Pickering, D. (2003). Classroom management that works: Research-based strategies for every teacher. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Vansteenkiste, M., Aelterman, N., Haerens, L., & Soenens, B. (2019). Seeking Stability in Stormy Educational Times: A Need-based Perspective on (De)motivating Teaching Grounded in Self-determination Theory. In Motivation in Education at a Time of Global Change (world; Vol. 20, pp. 53–80). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0749-742320190000020004