Teachers’ Autonomy-Relevant Practices
Within an Inquiry-Based Science
Curricular Context: Extending the Range
of Academically Significant AutonomySupportive Practices
TONI KEMPLER ROGAT
Rutgers University
SHELLY ANNE WITHAM
Rutgers University
CLARK CHINN
Rutgers University
Background: Research in traditional classrooms and laboratories has indicated that autonomy support by teachers is infrequent and focused on the narrow provision of choice. One
explanation for the limited autonomy support in classrooms is that typical school resources
and tasks limit the availability of experiences that are interesting, relevant, with meaningful
choice. Accordingly, it is critical to extend observation to contexts that enhance the likelihood
of detecting significant autonomy support. In this way, it will be possible to (a) determine
whether existing conceptualizations map onto behaviors in real classrooms and (b) enrich our
understanding of the variety of ways in which teachers provide autonomy when the curriculum is designed not to constrain it but to expand it.
Objective: In the current study, we extend and develop conceptualizations of autonomy support based on our observations within an inquiry context that offers a broad range of forms of
autonomy, thus gaining access to a more elaborated understanding of how real teachers offer
this support. We elaborate on and richly describe how classroom teachers support autonomy
in ways that extend the range of current conceptualizations, with implications for lending
validity to the construct and providing concrete description for practitioners.
Research Design: Qualitative analyses were conducted based on videotaped observations
of four 7th-grade science teachers, each enacting five inquiry-based science lessons designed
to encourage scientific reasoning. We developed a coding protocol grounded in theoretical
conceptualizations organized around five autonomy-support dimensions (i.e., procedural
Teachers College Record Volume 116, 070305, July 2014, 46 pages
Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161-4681
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and organizational support, rationale and relevance, responsiveness, feedback, cognitive autonomy support). We were exploratory in our use of content analysis in ways that evolved our
initial codes, given our aim to enrich and extend available characterizations of autonomysupportive practice to incorporate new conceptualizations of higher quality practice.
Conclusions: Observed enactments provide support for modifying our conceptualizations of
the upper end points of autonomy support to include more academically significant forms as
well as for making new distinctions in forms of autonomy support. This high quality and
multifaceted enactment was possible because practice was embedded within an inquiry-based
curriculum context that expanded opportunities for student agency. Implications for supporting educational leaders in facilitating teacher practice using this thick description and set of
exemplars are discussed.
Motivational research has emphasized the critical importance of autonomy in enhancing motivation and learning. Autonomy is conceptualized as
experiencing one’s actions as originating from within and as self-endorsed
(Deci & Ryan, 1985). Autonomy is also experienced when students’ interests, values, and goals are aligned with their behavior, because they endorse the significance of these behaviors as relevant to their own internal
goals (Reeve, Deci, & Ryan, 2004). Autonomy support shows benefits for
competence, enjoyment, intrinsic motivation (Cordova & Lepper, 1996;
Deci, Schwartz, Sheinman, & Ryan, 1981; Ryan & Deci, 2000), engagement
(Assor, Kaplan, & Roth, 2002; Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010; Reeve & Jang,
2006; Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004; Stefanou, Perencevich,
DiCintio, & Turner, 2004), and learning outcomes (Deci, Nezlek, &
Sheinman, 1981; Grolnick & Ryan, 1987).
Much of this research has relied on surveys of students’ perceptions
or laboratory research, which provide little information about teachers’
specific actions to promote autonomy. Observational research exploring
classroom enactment of autonomy is limited. What we know from this research is that enactment tends to focus on the provision of narrow forms of
choice, such as choice of partner, task format, or activity following completion of work, which may only initiate students’ feelings of control without
fostering deep-level engagement (Bozack, Vega, McCaslin, & Good, 2008;
Stefanou et al., 2004). However, this research has examined instruction in
traditional classrooms, which may only afford such constrained forms of
choice. To gain a more elaborated understanding of ways in which teachers can facilitate autonomy, in the current study we conduct observational
studies in inquiry-oriented classrooms, which may offer a broader range
of autonomy supports (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Cordova & Lepper, 1996).
Our purpose is to richly characterize teachers’ provision of academically
significant autonomy support within an inquiry-oriented science curricular
context. The curriculum is grounded in science reform efforts that have
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shifted from views of the teacher as the authority responsible for instructional delivery to one in which teachers facilitate and guide students’ involvement as active participants in inquiry with opportunities for initiating their
own learning (National Research Council, 2007). Moreover, the curriculum heeds calls for key content ideas to be contextualized within authentic
problems (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002). Given that these reforms conceptually
overlap with the focus of autonomy-supportive practices on student agency
and relevance, we advocate that observations of reform practices can help
us to extend the range of how we conceptualize autonomy support in ways
that lend validity to the theoretical construct (Patrick, Anderman, Ryan,
Edelin, & Midgley, 2001; Stefanou et al., 2004) and provide a blueprint useful for educators for how to enact these recommendations.
Toward this end, we sought to modify current conceptualizations of autonomy support that remain constrained by the context of study and by
the limited available descriptions of teacher enactment. While we ground
our observations in extant frameworks, we enrich and extend these descriptions based on observational data collected within inquiry-based science learning environments with autonomy-relevant features. Drawing
from these observations, we richly describe teacher practice to incorporate higher quality differentiations of autonomy support.
Literature Review
Autonomy-Supportive Practices
Although a common construal of autonomy focuses on the provision of
choice and the removal of extrinsic rewards and external controls, selfdetermination theory (SDT) conceptualizes autonomy more expansively.
Teachers afford autonomy when they provide latitude in decision making
(Skinner & Belmont, 1993) and encourage students to experience themselves as origins of their actions (deCharms, 1968). Teachers also foster
autonomy by encouraging students’ endorsement of classroom activity by
conveying a rationale, purpose, and value for activity (Reeve, Deci, et al.,
2004); these practices support autonomy because they show students how
school work can help them attain their own personal goals, pursue their
own interests, and fulfill their own values (Assor et al., 2002; Reeve, Bolt, &
Cai, 1999; Skinner & Belmont, 1993). When teachers connect class assignments to students’ own goals, interests, and values, it evokes in students
feelings that these activities are valuable in helping them accomplish what
they themselves choose to accomplish (Reeve & Jang, 2006). Finally, teachers who provide positive feedback about students’ mastery and progress
support autonomy (Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991; Reeve & Jang,
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2006), because such feedback provides information to students about how
they can make progress toward their own freely chosen and valued goals.
Most of the evidence for these theoretical recommendations comes
from studies using written surveys of students’ self-reported perceptions
(e.g., Skinner & Belmont, 1993) as well as controlled laboratory studies
(e.g., Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994). Reeve et al. (1999) classified
preservice teachers as high or low in autonomy support based on self-reports and observed their practices when instructing a peer on problem solutions for a puzzle during a 10-min instructional exchange in a laboratory
setting. Autonomy-supportive teachers spent more time listening, asking
what students wanted, demonstrating responsiveness to student questions,
and expressing a willingness to take students’ perspectives. In addition,
these teachers allowed more time for students to manipulate objects, resisted simply giving the answer, and used fewer controlling directive statements (Reeve et al., 1999). These practices have been linked to students’
perceptions of autonomy support (Reeve & Jang, 2006).
Laboratory studies raise questions of ecological validity, especially because these studies have often examined practices during tasks that may
constrain the range of autonomy support. Studies have deliberately examined autonomy-relevant practice during boring tasks with less obvious
utility (Deci et al., 1994) as well as on puzzles (Reeve et al., 1999). Also,
although researchers acknowledge the potential of authentic activities,
long-term projects, and inquiry-oriented reforms for enhancing autonomy, the difficulty of developing and enacting these units seems to have
led researchers to study more restricted learning environments that afford only “minimal embellishments” for autonomy (Cordova & Lepper,
1996). In Cordova and Lepper’s (1996) research, they acknowledge that
only limited autonomy support was provided via “personalization of several incidental features of the learning context” as well as “choices only over
instructionally irrelevant aspects of the learning activity” (p. 716). While
this research may resemble student experiences during traditional school
activities that are assumed to be “not very interesting or relevant” (Assor
et al., 2002, p. 265), we question how to extend these conceptualizations
of autonomy support, because the research context seems to curtail the
range of autonomy provided.
There are observational studies of autonomy support in classrooms
but mainly in classrooms using more traditional curricula. Reeve, Jang,
et al. (2004) observed classroom teachers’ use of autonomy supportive
and inhibitive practices before and following training. However, observed
enactments were reduced to ratings, and the descriptive nature of the
data was not maintained. Stefanou et al. (2004) explained that enacted
autonomy support has essentially become synonymous with choice, with
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limited access to a full range in autonomy-supportive practices that connect classroom activities to students’ goals, interests, and values. Findings
also indicate that such classroom teachers provide a limited range of
autonomy, focusing on the provision of academically irrelevant choices
(Bozack et al., 2008; Stefanou et al., 2004). Teachers tend to offer choice
on more superficial task components, such as selecting partners for group
work, choosing the format of a final product (graph or table), or selecting
colors to decorate a graph. Thus, choice is incorporated on instructionally less relevant aspects of academic tasks (Bozack et al., 2008). Taken
together, research to date has yielded a conceptualization of autonomy
support that focuses on a rather narrow range of teacher practices. In the
present study, we seek to broaden this conceptualization by examining
teacher practices in a curriculum that affords a much broader and richer
range of practices.
Broadening conceptualization of autonomy support beyond choice
Recent theoretical elaborations of autonomy support can ground investigation for how teachers provide more academically significant autonomy support within curriculum contexts encouraging a broader range of autonomy.
As described above, relevance is fostered by incorporating activities relevant
to students’ personal interests and goals, by explaining the relevance and
rationale behind assigned tasks, and by being responsive and open to task
modification given students’ voiced goals and values (Assor et al., 2002;
Reeve & Jang, 2006). The added benefit of including rationale and relevance is supported by research indicating benefits for motivation and engagement, more so than perceptions of choice (Assor et al., 2002).
Stefanou et al. (2004) argued for broadening the conceptualization of
autonomy by including cognitive autonomy support within a taxonomy of
three types of support. Organizational autonomy support includes opportunities for choice over environmental procedures, such as developing classroom rules, deciding on task deadlines, and choosing group members.
Procedural autonomy support fosters ownership of form and the outputs of
learning. Here, teachers foster autonomy by giving choice of materials and
media (e.g., graph or picture), of how to handle manipulatives, and of how
to display their individual solutions. Cognitive autonomy support means providing students with ownership over their own ideas, thinking, and learning. Here, students are encouraged to generate theories and solution paths,
justify and argue for their idea, and evaluate their own and others’ contributions. Results suggest that procedural and organizational autonomy serve to
initiate students’ willingness to begin task work, while cognitive autonomy
support may sustain deep-level engagement (Stefanou et al., 2004).
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Using this broadened framework, Bozack et al. (2008) investigated whether these autonomy-supportive practices could be identified in teachers’
practice as part of a school reform effort focused on enhancing achievement in low income schools. Findings indicated that there were few provided opportunities for choice (also see Wiley, Good, & McCaslin, 2008). In
addition, choice was typically offered only after completion rather than during an assigned task. While several lessons involved students manipulating
objects, in 50% of these cases students used the same objects in a uniform
manner, indicating limited procedural autonomy. Teachers responded to
student questions (responsive) but often did not elaborate on student’s
voiced ideas. Teachers did not situate the content in a broader context to
enhance relevance. Finally, students had several opportunities to talk, but
these were primarily teacher–student exchanges within whole-class discussion; only 25% of instances involved students working in partners or groups.
Turner, Warzon, and Christensen (2011) used the procedural, organizational, and cognitive autonomy-support framework as part of a professional
development initiative in support of teachers’ motivational practices (Turner
et al., 2011). Two of the three teachers selected for in-depth observation and
interviews evidenced some beginning shifts in autonomy-supportive practice. For example, observed teachers asked more “why” questions in small
group venues and held back doing the work for students in efforts to elicit
explanation from students. These teachers enacted traditional curricula and
therefore may have had fewer affordances for cognitive autonomy-supportive practice. Indeed, teachers faced difficulty mapping professional development exemplars of cognitive autonomy support to their own instruction
given how different the modeled instruction seemed from their own.
In summary, theoretical conceptualizations of autonomy support have
been advanced, with few observational studies to establish their construct
validity. In particular, there is little research showing that cognitive autonomy support can be found in classrooms taught by students’ regular teachers. Moreover, only short descriptions of the enacted curricula are provided in previous work, which makes it difficult to disentangle the role of the
teacher or curricular tasks in supporting autonomy (Blumenfeld, 1992).
Further, extant research has relied on student-reported perceptions and
laboratory studies with uninteresting and inauthentic tasks or games that
may ultimately constrain our conceptualization of autonomy-supportive
practice. Moreover, recent observations suggest limited evidence of autonomy-supportive practices (Bozack et al., 2008). One explanation for
the low frequency is that typical school resources and tasks limit the availability of experiences that are interesting and relevant with meaningful
choice (Assor et al., 2002). Accordingly, it is critical to extend observation
to contexts that enhance the likelihood of detecting significant autonomy
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support. In this way, it will be possible to (a) determine whether existing
conceptualizations map onto behaviors in real classrooms and (b) enrich
our understanding of the variety of ways in which teachers provide autonomy when the curriculum is designed not to constrain it but to expand
it. This is especially critical because available research provides limited
guidance for teachers in how to implement these practices in nontrivial
ways; this is particularly true of practices that support cognitive autonomy.
In the current study, we build from these current theoretical frameworks
to extend and develop conceptualizations of autonomy support based on
our observational data of inquiry-based science enactment. We also break
new ground by presenting the curriculum affordances in ways that help to
differentiate the role of curriculum features and teacher practice.
Reform-Oriented Science Instruction
Reform-oriented science instruction places students in inquiry contexts
that should be expected to expand opportunities for student autonomy.
The Next Generation Science Standards (National Research Council,
2013) highlight the importance of engaging in inquiry while learning
content. These reforms articulate four strands of science proficiency
that focus on students developing explanations, generating and evaluating evidence, and participating in the processes and discourse of science
(National Research Council, 2007). This focus on students’ active cognitive involvement in their own learning replaces earlier standards that
focused primarily on students’ engagement in the processes and activities
of science (National Research Council, 1996). To some degree, this shift
in focus within reform documents evidences a transition from a focus on
procedures and hands-on experimentation toward a focus on the cognitive processes involved in the disciplinary practice of science (Furtak &
Kunter, 2012). These inquiry environments have also been found to be
effective for learning. Chinn, Duncan, Dianovsky, and Rinehart (2013)
reviewed literature showing that students who learn science in inquiry environments learn more than students in traditional instruction (see also
Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, & Chinn, 2007). Research also indicates that these
environments require guidance and scaffolding in order to be effective
(Chinn & Clark, 2013; Chinn et al., 2013).
Thus, these inquiry environments appear likely to increase autonomy,
and particularly to provide many opportunities for cognitive autonomy.
Indeed, the very definition of cognitive autonomy (i.e., student ownership
of ideas) maps onto the goals of these curricula: having students develop
their own explanations and then generate their own arguments in support
of these explanations.
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Current Study
This study contributes to extant research in three primary ways. First, we
extend classroom observations to an inquiry context that offers a broader
range of forms of autonomy, thus gaining access to a more elaborated
understanding of how real teachers support autonomy. Second, using the
broader range of observed practices, we build from existing frameworks
to extend available characterizations of autonomy-supportive practice to
incorporate new conceptualizations of higher quality practices. Third, we
thickly characterize enactment by mapping this real classroom enactment
onto our newly enriched conceptualization of academically significant autonomy support to assist in both its theoretical elaboration and construct
validity (Patrick et al., 2001; Stefanou et al., 2004) with implications for
providing concrete description for practitioners.
Method
Participants
The participants were four 7th-grade science teachers from two middle
schools. All four teachers had worked previously with the project team.
Two were originally recruited through calls to the district; the other two
knew project team members through the contact of one teacher with
project personnel in university classes. One middle school enrolled primarily European American students from an upper-middle-class district
with high performance on state standardized tests. The second middle
school was highly diverse economically and ethnically and was identified
as low performing on state tests. Teachers were in their second year of
enacting the curricula but ranged in teaching experience (4–20 years of
experience).
Teachers enacted several curriculum modules across the academic
year. Teachers within the same school enacted common modules. The
cell membranes module was enacted by two teachers in the uppermiddle-class school during December and early January. The taxonomy
module was enacted by the two teachers in the second middle school
starting in mid-February through early March. Teachers were video recorded every day throughout the unit, and a subset of five lessons from
each teacher was selected for the purpose of the present analysis (N =
20). The first and last lessons for the module were deliberately selected
for each teacher. Three additional lessons were randomly chosen from
their remaining set of observed lessons.
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Curriculum Context
Classroom teachers enacted inquiry-based instructional units designed to
encourage scientific reasoning as part of the larger Promoting Reasoning
and Conceptual Change in Science (PRACCIS) project (Chinn, Duschl,
Duncan, Buckland, & Pluta, 2008). These inquiry units integrated several features that have the potential for facilitating autonomy support
(Blumenfeld, Kempler, & Krajcik, 2006).1 We organize the curriculumrelevant supports into five primary categories. Here, we describe each
dimension of autonomy support and provide accompanying examples.
First, the module integrates contextualization by organizing unit content
around a driving question (Krajcik & Blumenfeld, 2006) and embedding
the study of content ideas within relevant problems. Unit contextualization enhances relevance by connecting content to students’ interests and
lives and providing an authentic problem context that serves to organize
the key content ideas (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002; Rivet & Krajcik, 2008).
For instance, the cell membranes unit is organized around the question
of how lead gets into cells to poison them. Second, the units incorporate
tasks that are open in structure. Students engage in model generation,
inquiry investigation, data analysis, and scientific explanation. Tasks afford autonomy given their open nature, with openness involving having
more than a single right answer (Cohen, 1994), as well as opportunities
for self-direction, choice, and decision making (Henningsen & Stein,
1997; Reeve, Deci, et al., 2004). These open tasks are grounded in studentinitiated ideas and theories (i.e., conceptual agency) (Gresalfi, Martin,
Hand, & Greeno, 2009) and involve high cognitive demand, requiring
students to engage in explanation, justification, and synthesis of their
working ideas in ways that facilitate cognitive autonomy (Stein, Grover, &
Henningsen, 1996). For example, students develop self-constructed theories into models explaining scientific phenomena and evidence. Tasks also
afford choice of what particular ideas and evidence should be included in
their explanatory models or arguments (e.g., choice to use evidence from
egg lab in model).
Third, the curriculum—in line with science standard reform documents—incorporates disciplinary practices of science, such as developing
and revising models based on evidence and the use of justification to substantiate claims (Chinn & Buckland, 2011; Duncan, Freidenreich, Chinn,
& Bausch 2011). When students gain access to the disciplinary practices
of science, in which they choose what they think is best justified, they are
afforded cognitive autonomy. Moreover, disciplinary practice holds students accountable for meeting science norms, rather than simply to the
teacher’s right answer (Gresalfi et al., 2009). Students establish shared
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criteria that serve as the basis for quality model development, evaluation,
and revision. The curricula also incorporates instructional scaffolds that
support students’ use of disciplinary practices by establishing connections
with evidence (i.e., model–evidence diagrams), integrating reasons and
justifications into their models (i.e., reason bubbles), and prompting general discourse to facilitate public reasoning.
Fourth, these inquiry modules afford a number of opportunities for collaboration in small groups during which the students within the group,
rather than the teacher, are responsible for decision making and directing the group activity (Rogat, Linnenbrink-Garcia, & DiDonato, 2013).
Finally, the unit integrates a participation structure of collaborative reasoning during which students engage in argumentation in whole-class discussion grounded in student-initiated ideas and student-directed exchanges
(Chinn, Anderson, & Waggoner, 2001). Below are elaborated descriptions
of the two observed modules.
Professional development of the teachers did not focus explicitly on notions of autonomy or autonomy support but did encourage teachers to
allow students to take ownership of the development of ideas. Specifically,
they were encouraged to allow students to take more control over what
ideas are discussed, which models were supported and argued for, and
which arguments to construct.
Cell Membranes Module
This unit was contextualized around the driving question, “How does lead
get into cells?” The initial lesson connected to student interests by introducing examples and a mystery that highlighted this question’s relevance.
Here, students were exposed to a recent investigation into lead poisoning
as the possible cause of Beethoven’s death. Over the course of the lead
module, students developed, revised, and critiqued explanatory models
for how substances (including lead) get into cells. Through a series of inquiry events and data analysis, students discovered that there are multiple
mechanisms by which substances get into cells. Initially, many students developed what might be called a “squeeze model”; very small molecules simply squeeze through small holes in the membranes. This model was sufficient to explain an initial series of experiments in which water passes back
and forth through egg cell membranes. But later data showed that other
mechanisms, including mechanisms requiring energy input, are needed
to explain how other substances, including lead, enter cells. Throughout
the module, students worked individually and in collaborative groups to
construct, evaluate, and revise their own models.
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Taxonomy Module
This unit was contextualized around three interrelated driving questions, “How do we classify things?” “What kind of evidence is used in classifying?” and “How do we determine which similarities and differences
between organisms are the important ones for classification?” The initial
lesson was designed to elicit interest and rationale for unit content by
presenting a cartoon in which middle-school-aged children were arguing about whether the blue-ringed octopus is more closely related to the
crown-of-thorns starfish or to a garden snail. After students initially considered the similarities and differences between the pair of animals, they
engaged in a jigsaw activity in which different groups of students studied
the characteristics of the three different species. Then new groups comprising at least one expert on each of the three species convened to develop arguments for whether the octopus was more closely related to the
starfish or to the snail. Although students had not yet studied evolutionary theory, most came to appreciate that some similarities (such as neural structures) were “deeper” than others (such as color). Throughout
the module, students worked individually and in groups to elaborate and
construct their arguments.
Teachers’ Autonomy-Supportive Practices
We developed a coding protocol to examine teachers’ autonomy-supportive practices using five dimensions. The initial codes were grounded
in theoretical conceptualizations and previous observation measures of
autonomy-relevant practice. However, because much of this research has
employed student surveys (Assor et al., 2002), frequency counts of teacher behaviors (Reeve & Jang, 2006; Reeve, Jang, et al., 2004), and rating
scales (Bozack et al., 2008), there are few descriptions of actual teacher
practice that allow us to more fully operationalize each coding dimension.
Moreover, previous studies have been conducted in traditional classrooms
and laboratory settings and may not be representative of the potential
range of autonomy-relevant practices. Thus, while employing these initial
coding dimensions, we were careful not to be constrained by these dimensions; rather, we remained continually open to identifying from our data
new types of practices for how teachers could afford autonomy within this
inquiry-based curriculum context. Our codes evolved over the course of
the coding and data analysis process in ways that both elaborated practices
that mapped onto extant distinctions as well as identified new subcategories of autonomy-supportive practices. Codes were assigned when teachers
enacted inquiry module categories and/or used their own supplemental
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practices (e.g., questioning and feedback). Below we operationalize each
coding dimension as initially conceived and present the revised elaborated coding in the results (which will be presented later in Table 3).
Organizational and Procedural Autonomy Support
This code designated teachers’ practices for providing students with opportunities for decision making in the classroom and was operationalized
in ways described in past research (Stefanou et al., 2004). Organizational
autonomy support was designated when teachers involved students in decision making related to classroom organization, such as which group should
present first and selection of group members. Teachers provided procedural
autonomy support with decision-making opportunities related to task format,
such as choice in displaying work or how to work with materials. Teachers
could inhibit organizational and procedural autonomy when withdrawing
opportunities for decision making around procedures, materials, and form
and exerting authority using “must” or “have to” statements.
Rationale and Relevance
This coding dimension was identified when teachers drew connections between content, tasks, and skills with student’s goals, values, and interests. This
conceptualization was grounded in the theoretical ideas established in past
work (Assor et al., 2002), as well as operationalized statements provided in
observational studies (Reeve & Jang, 2006). Teachers convey rationale by introducing a lesson’s purpose and utility of lesson content and/or skills. Teachers
enhance relevance by connecting to students’ personal interests, everyday lives,
and to a larger problem or context. Low rationale and relevance were designated when teachers discounted the value or purpose of the material.
Responsiveness
Indicators of responsiveness included active listening and responding to
students (Bozack et al., 2008; Reeve & Jang, 2006). Teacher practices evidence this practice when they answer questions, provide feedback, or elaborate on student ideas. Instruction was qualified as nonresponsive when a
teacher ignored or was dismissive of student contributions.
Feedback
Similar to past research, we focused on positive feedback as facilitating
autonomy when teachers recognized progress or improved understanding
(Reeve & Jang, 2006). Further, given our current focus on student ideas,
to be identified as autonomy relevant, we narrowed our focus on feedback
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specific to student-initiated ideas rather than simply restating teacherpresented facts, skills, or procedures. Negative feedback occurred when
teachers provided criticism or critical feedback on students’ contributions.
Cognitive Autonomy Support
This code identified teachers’ practices that provided students with agency
related to content ideas, skills, thinking, and learning (Stefanou et al., 2004).
Teacher practices afford cognitive autonomy by maintaining openness of
the curriculum tasks, eliciting students’ content ideas and accompanying
justifications, and encouraging a range of explanations among students. In
contrast, teachers could inhibit cognitive autonomy by closing a curriculum
task, limiting opportunities for student explanation and meaning construction, and lowering the cognitive demand of a task or using low-level questions focused on rehearsal and recall. Teachers lowered cognitive autonomy
by retaining teacher responsibility or heavily leading the discussion without
building from students’ contributions or by simply stating the answer.
Coding and Analyses
Qualitative analyses were employed to examine how teachers used a range
of autonomy-relevant practices while enacting inquiry modules. Here, we
provide an overview of analyses, which were developed following the guidelines described by Miles and Huberman (1994). An elaborated running record was prepared for each videotaped observation. In advance of preparing a running record, the observer read over the coding protocol to ensure
that the focus on the motivational practices of interest was sustained during
the video observation. Each videotaped lesson was viewed twice. During the
first viewing, a running record was created. The elaborated running records
included a detailed description of teacher instruction (e.g., introducing
the lesson), questioning and feedback practices, and teacher–student interaction dialogue, with significant portions of the videotape transcribed
verbatim. The elaborated running record was meant to describe teacher
practice without interpretation by the viewer. During the second viewing,
the running record was further refined with added detail. Two graduate students were responsible for creating the elaborated running records. Initial
training on elaborated running records development used practice videos.
These drafted records were compared and discussed until consensus was
reached on what was observed and recorded. The responsibility for the first
viewing was divided equally, but all second viewings were conducted by the
second author, the primary observer and coder, to ensure that the level of
detail and focus of the running records remained consistent.
The running records were coded for autonomy-relevant practices using
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the coding protocol. If coding dimensions were modified during the coding process in response to a new example or practice, we made the appropriate modification to the coding protocol and went back and recoded or
analyzed the running records to reflect these changes. The codes were not
mutually exclusive; identified teacher practices could be coded on multiple dimensions. Each autonomy code was accompanied by a justification.
The justification designated which of five dimensions of the protocol was
evident. In addition, a written description of why the observed practice
was autonomy relevant was provided.
The first and second authors checked for coder consistency in identifying
the instances of autonomy-relevant coding dimensions within two practice
running records. All the inconsistencies were discussed until agreement was
reached. Subsequently, the second author coded all running records. All
elaborations to the initial set of codes were mutually discussed prior to formally including them within a modified set of codes. This process involved
the joint examination of examples from the elaborated running records
and agreement that a new distinction or elaboration was warranted. When
questions surfaced, the instance was discussed until consensus was reached.
Our qualitative examination of the prepared elaborated running records
was guided by content analysis and involved several passes through the data.
Content analysis consists of tagging running records with codes established
based on prior theory and can be exploratory or confirmatory (Bernard
& Ryan, 2010). In drawing on content analysis, we were exploratory given
our aim to enrich and extend available characterizations of autonomy-supportive practice to incorporate new conceptualizations of higher quality
practice. We primarily relied on qualitative analysis of each coded instance
within and across lessons (in prepared a data matrix, see below; also see frequency analysis), rather than more typically presented quantitative analyses;
this modification is appropriate given calls to analyze the data matrix with
appropriate matched analyses (Bernard & Ryan, 2010, p. 290).
In terms of analysis, tables for all autonomy-relevant codes were created
for each running record for each teacher. The tables included all lesson
segments identified as autonomy relevant in a row for an entire elaborated
record. The tables were then used to construct lesson summaries regarding
autonomy-relevant practices for each observed lesson. These lesson summaries were constructed jointly by the first and second authors. The summary
included an in-depth description for how the teacher supported or inhibited autonomy for each dimension as well as frequencies of each dimension.
Because coded instances ranged in length from a single sentence to several pages of record, we also examined the presence or absence of each dimension during a lesson quartile as a proxy for frequency. To do this, each
lesson was divided into four equal segments, which was approximately a
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10-min segment given the 40-min class period. Given four quartiles for
each of the 20 lessons, there were 80 total lesson quartiles. Referring back
to each running record, we counted whether a particular dimension was
enacted during each of the four lesson quartiles (e.g., we counted the
number of lesson quartiles that included rationale and relevance).
After preparing lesson summaries, a teacher summary was prepared.
Teacher summaries synthesized autonomy-relevant practices across the
five lesson summaries for each teacher. In a final step, we jointly drew conclusions regarding how teachers used autonomy-relevant practices across
all observed lessons to provide a summary description for each dimension.
This analysis involved examining the tables and summaries to ensure a full
range of practices were identified.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
In general, we observed instances of each of the designated autonomy
practice dimensions using a more inclusive conceptualization (see Table
1). In addition, enactment of the full range of autonomy-supportive practices was prevalent, with each practice evidenced in 17 to 45 lesson quartiles. Moreover, autonomy-inhibitive practices were relatively infrequent.
While cognitive autonomy support was the most predominant, low cognitive autonomy was the most frequent inhibitive practice. The frequency
of low cognitive autonomy may reveal tensions in fostering cognitive autonomy that we take up in Results and Discussion.
Rationale and
Relevance
Responsive
Positive
feedback
Cognitive
Autonomy
Support
Low Org and
Proc
Autonomy
Low Rationale
and Relevance
Nonresponsive
Negative
Feedback
Low Cognitive
Autonomy
TOTALS
0:00–10:00
7
11
8
4
14
4
1
4
4
6
63
10:00–20:00
10
9
10
4
13
5
0
1
3
9
64
20:00–30:00
6
6
5
5
12
2
0
2
1
5
44
30:00–40:00
3
5
9
4
6
1
0
1
2
2
33
TOTALS
26
31
32
17
45
12
1
8
10
22
204
Lesson
Quartile
Org and Proc
Autonomy
Table 1. Frequency of Observed Autonomy-Supportive and -Inhibitive
Practices by Lesson Quartile
Note: N = 80 total lesson quartiles; four per lesson within five lessons per teacher.
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We also explored whether certain practices were more likely to occur at
particular times during the lesson. This result is important because it is unclear whether teachers employ autonomous practices mainly at the lesson
outset or more evenly throughout. An examination of the presence and
absence of each practice by quartile suggests that teachers used autonomyrelevant practices throughout the lesson. These practices were somewhat
more likely to occur during the first half than in the latter half of class.
Specific to dimension, trends suggest that rationale and relevance, as well
as organizational and procedural autonomy (low and high), were more
evident during the first lesson half.
Finally, we were interested in understanding how dimensions of autonomy practice were used over the course of the lesson. More specifically,
teachers might employ practices individually by presenting one argument
for a lesson’s relevance or several dimensions in combination during a lesson quartile to afford autonomy. To conduct this descriptive analysis, we
identified how many of the autonomy-supportive dimensions had been employed within each quartile for each lesson by teacher. Next, we calculated
the frequency of quartiles that contained none to all five of the autonomy
dimensions. We used these frequency counts to calculate percentages for
ease of interpretation (see Table 2). These results highlight that in 64% of
quartiles, two or more autonomy-supportive dimensions were used in combination. This analysis indicates that teachers drew on multiple means for
fostering autonomy during particular lesson segments across the lesson.
In the following sections, we turn to a presentation of qualitative results
that highlights the autonomy-supportive and -inhibitive practices used by
teachers. Our goal is to provide a rich portrait of the specific ways in which
teachers enacted the different forms of autonomy.
Table 2. Number of Autonomy-Supportive Dimensions in Each Lesson
Quartile
# of Autonomy-Supportive
Dimensions per Quartile
Frequency Count
Percentage
0
19
24%
1
10
13%
2
21
26%
3
21
26%
4
8
10%
5
1
1%
Total
80
100%
Note: N = 80 total lesson quartiles; four per lesson within five lessons per teacher.
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Organizational and Procedural Autonomy
Providing Choice in Decision Making
Similar to previous characterizations of organizational and procedural autonomy support, teachers provided students with choice through a range
of decision-making opportunities. Organizational autonomy was afforded
when students decided which group member would present an example
of how reasons were integrated in their model. Procedural autonomy affordances included choice of task format, such as typing on the computer
and using color to represent model revision. Students were also afforded
procedural autonomy via task decisions, such as how to include new evidence within their models. Finally, students experienced organizational
autonomy via social practice, like selecting their group members. Beyond
these more typical means of providing organizational and procedural autonomy, teachers also provided choice and decision making afforded by
curriculum tasks.
Limiting Choice
There were instances in which teachers inhibited provision of choice.
For instance, teachers limited organizational autonomy by modifying
a curriculum-recommended group task to an individual task. During a
taxonomy-unit task in which students were asked to provide links between the evidence and the models, a teacher modified the task to an
individual assignment, stating: “They [university team] said to work in
pairs, but each of you will do one individually.” In this case, because
group work provides the chance for decision making in terms of task
management, converting a task to an individual assignment reduces student responsibility. It may be that students do not experience this practice as autonomy inhibitive unless teachers discuss their withdrawal of
the opportunity with students.
Compliance
Teachers evidenced strategies for getting students to comply with their
directions and deadlines. Teachers required compliance to ensure work
was completed (i.e., no lunch until work is completed), to meet task
deadlines, and for good behavior (i.e., celebratory class party). Thus,
while these practices limited students’ autonomy and exerted teacher
control, these familiar practices primarily served classroom management purposes.
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Rationale and Relevance
Unit Contextualization
Teachers fostered relevance by contextualizing the content within the
curriculum unit’s larger real world problem or context (Assor et al.,
2002; Chinn & Malhotra, 2002; Rivet & Krajcik, 2008). Teachers elaborated on the unit contextualization by adding problems and examples to
heighten content connections to students’ everyday lives. When teachers
communicate the relevance of unit content, this may facilitate autonomy
needs by addressing students’ values, interests, and goals. For instance,
as encouraged by the curriculum, teachers introduced the danger of
lead-based paint used in homes and in toy production. This connection
to students’ homes and neighborhoods highlighted the contemporary
relevance of the historical example of Beethoven’s conjectured death by
lead poisoning. In one case, a teacher introduced a relevant context by
drawing on a historical account of a failed Arctic expedition in which the
members were afflicted by food stored in lead cans. In these ways, the
teachers added to the curriculum-introduced relevance, sometimes providing specific connections to students’ community in order to address
students’ values and interests.
Over the course of the unit, teachers reconnected to the driving question. For example, they reintroduced the guiding question using questioning: “What is the problem we are trying to solve? What’s our question for
the unit?” In other cases, teachers connected the problem context with
new concepts and skills. For instance, teachers were observed raising the
driving question to focus students on the key question when evaluating
models, as in this example:
T: Should the model have a cell? (Ss: Yes). Yeah, the question says
“How does lead get into the cell?” The cell is probably a pretty important part of that model. Should there be lead? Yes, so use the
[driving] question to guide you with what should be important.
Here, the driving question served to contextualize and ground discussions throughout the unit, including content representations as well as
establishing criteria for evaluating models. Highlighting authentic aspects
of the driving question and connecting to the larger context is a new elaboration, given that teachers made explicit relevance and rationale when
introducing lessons with authentic problem contexts. This extends past
work that has focused on rationale in the case of irrelevant or less meaningful tasks to gain student buy in.
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Use of Examples
Teachers drew on examples to introduce interesting features and content
relevance when representing concepts. Examples foster autonomy by introducing value and interest for the content. Teachers used curriculumrecommended videos and specimens (e.g., starfish) for student observation. Teachers also generated examples that referenced students’ lives
(e.g., evaluating a model showing lead entering a cell using tiny hammers
by connecting to a television commercial that uses cartoon images of mucus-as-monsters inhabiting your lungs).
Teacher examples also had the benefit of building toward lesson objectives. In this exemplar, the class has been developing criteria for evaluating models by discussing university students’ models for how lead enters
the cell. A student proposed that when we eat food it enters the stomach
and intestines, suggesting one vehicle for lead’s entry into cells. The teacher takes up the student’s model (see responsive) and provides an example
for this proposed mechanism:
T: Wow, so S has just proposed an entirely different model. . . . S
is saying that it is a nutrient model like . . . So you’re saying that
our cells think it’s like a nutrient and takes it [lead] in. Where
have we seen something like that before . . . where something
sneaks in because everyone thinks it’s something else? (Students
offer examples and then the T offers) I was thinking about the Trojan
horse . . . so I’m actually going to stick with yours [model]. It is
the Trojan horse idea.
The Trojan horse example had the benefit of representing how lead
might sneak into a cell when the cell “believes” that lead is something else.
Moreover, because students are unable to directly observe the process of
lead entering the cell, examples that elucidate alternative models for how
lead enters the cell help clarify key points of the unit.
In some cases, the connection between examples and key content was
less clear, which may limit autonomy benefits. For instance, one teacher
did not elicit students’ observations after passing around a snail specimen.
The intent of the specimen example was relevant to the unit’s driving
question regarding the similarities and differences with octopuses. It is
less clear whether autonomy is supported when the connection between
examples and the content is not made explicit, because students may not
make the connection to their interests, values, and goals.
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Providing Rationale
Teachers provided rationale by connecting content and skills to prior lessons. By showing connections among lessons with respect to content and
skills that students were working to deepen, teachers convey that the purpose of the lesson is grounded in what came before. This practice may
convey rationale by communicating coherence among lessons within and
across units as well as by establishing a lesson or unit goal that students
value. Teachers also conveyed rationale by making lesson goals explicit and
highlighting their importance. Providing a rationale for skill development
may be particularly influential given that their utility may not be clear to students. Here, the teacher provided rationale by reminding students of skills
they had previously acquired and would be a continued focus in the unit:
T: We’re going to link evidence to specific parts of the model. So,
for example, remember that one of the tables for the bees thing [a
previous curriculum investigating the death of bees], it supported part of
the model but not all of it? . . . I think the mites and viruses [piece of
evidence that may have explained possible causes of bee death] supported
part of it [the model] but not the whole thing? . . . We are going
to specifically link that evidence to that specific part of the model.
Next, the teacher followed up by introducing the lesson goal of using a
scaffold called reason bubbles to revise their models and by discussing its
value by connecting this scaffold to the work of scientists:
T: We are going to add little cartoon thought bubbles to your models. This is so I can see why you think what you think. [For example]
You said “water is moving from a greater to lesser concentration.” I
want to explain how you know that. So we’re going to put that into
thought bubbles. So, scientists use models for all these reasons and
they have good reasons for why they put what they put there. So,
if they say “syrup is not going through the membrane” they have a
good reason for saying that. If they say “water is moving through
the membrane” they have a good reason for saying that too. And
that usually is based on evidence or should be based on evidence.
So your reason bubbles should do two things. Tell what the evidence is and show what part of the model it is. By reminding the students of what they were studying the previous day
and conveying a rationale for the inclusion of reason bubbles by connecting to scientists’ use of evidence, teachers may support students in feeling
that the tasks are connected to their learning goals, are relevant, and are
useful for new tasks.
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Responsiveness
Active Listening
Teachers demonstrated several responsive practices in support of autonomy by actively listening. Teachers demonstrated active listening by going
beyond offering contingent replies. Teachers used students’ own words
and ideas in response to questions. Teachers also restated students’ ideas
prior to elaborating on their contribution with the intent of adding content points. Teachers were responsive when they asked follow-up questions
in response to a contribution that encouraged that student to restate, extend, and clarify their presented content idea. This likely helped teachers
ensure that they understood students’ ideas prior to providing elaboration or using the idea in subsequent discussion. For instance, a student
explains his/her evaluation about the models that the teacher placed on
the overhead projector:
S: They [the models] didn’t really make any sense; they didn’t
really show how like . . . it didn’t really make sense to us, it didn’t
really show how like what infection got into them, and how like it
got into the cells and didn’t like make the model of it.
T: So are you saying that it never really even talked about the cells?
S: It did a little, but not really. It didn’t give enough detail.
A second set of practices relevant to active listening was drawing on students’ ideas during content representation. Teachers demonstrated responsiveness by drawing on students’ ideas to make key lesson points or by
returning to a contribution and reintegrating the content idea into discussion. In the following exemplar, the teacher reintegrated a student’s earlier
point during a discussion about the best and worst university-student model:
T: S, I keep staring at you because this answers your original question where it [the model] doesn’t say how it’s getting into the
body; it says baby eats lead chip. But, the question though is how
does it [lead] get into the cells? Does that make sense? So this is
answering your original question, which is how does lead get into
the body. . . . But S’s question isn’t a question about the models,
it’s a question about [how] it gets into the body.
Returning to students’ contributions, questions, and examples may be
particularly autonomy supportive because it conveys that the students’
ideas were heard, that they provided a valuable contribution to the class
discussion, and that they were an initiator of key points.2
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Encouraging Peer Responsiveness
Another responsive practice was encouraging students to actively listen to
one another. One strategy for encouraging peer responsiveness involved
teachers calling for consensus and for voiced agreement or disagreement.
Teachers also urged students to listen and be prepared to respond to
peers during whole-class and small-group discussion. In this example, the
teacher encouraged student responsiveness by prompting for students to
address another’s contributions:
T: I think S1 said some really powerful things. S1 gave us a clear
explanation of why hyenas might eat lions. That’s good stuff. [T
calls on S2 who disagrees with S1.]
T: Wait, before we are agreeing or disagreeing with S1. Do you
feel S1 met the qualifications [criteria] . . . ?
S2: I think S1 did.
T: OK, good. Now, tell us why you [S2] disagree with S1? [T turns
to S1] S1, you need to listen, because you may need to go for a
rebuttal.
In addition, teachers made general statements to the whole class about
the importance of listening and responding to each other’s points:
T: As a class, you should be giving the people in the front your
undivided attention and also help them out and learn from
each other by participating. So, I want to see lots of people
with their hands up, with things to contribute. Challenge each
other. OK?
When peers are encouraged to listen to one another’s claims and to directly respond to peers, a classroom norm for student–student dialogue
is promoted. To some degree, this responsive practice is aligned with
curriculum features that foster students to be initiators of discussion via
participation structures and that recommend peers hold each other accountable for use of the disciplinary practice of science, such as justifying presented claims. When teachers encourage peer responsiveness
in ways that afford listening, teachers are not only fostering autonomy
via active listening but also by removing themselves from being the sole
manager of discussion.
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Feedback
Recognizing Progress
We observed teachers providing positive feedback to students with brief
statements such as “Good job” or (with a little more elaboration) “Good,
now you’re beginning to think like scientists!” However, for the purposes
of our discussion, we highlight how teachers used positive feedback to
recognize students’ progress related to skill use, to revise student-initiated
ideas, and to foster content understanding. These teacher practices highlight feedback that is focused on students’ contributed ideas and progress.
Positive feedback focused on students’ new contributions or unique additions are indicative of growth in thinking and idea development. At the
beginning of units, we observed supportive feedback on initial models,
“I’m looking around and I see some really great models,” while also emphasizing room for improvement, “Well, you guys should feel good because most of your models were better than these [the university student’s
examples]. Some of you still need work. We all can improve. But you’re off
to a really great start.” At the beginning of the taxonomy unit, one student
suggested counting the number of similarities between animals to determine their relatedness as the teacher wrote a list of animal characteristics
on the board. The teacher responded, “Oh, so you’re actually counting,
that’s interesting,” in positive feedback toward the student’s offered classification strategy. Students may experience this feedback as autonomy supportive because of its focus on their initial ideas early in the unit.
Teachers also used feedback to recognize student-contributed ideas that
advanced the discussion. For example, when discussing the lead models,
a student contributed a new innovative idea around the skill of using a
mechanism in the reason bubbles. Here, the teacher acknowledged the
contribution of how to think about a mechanism similar to thinking about
how a finger works: “You talked about the idea of a mechanism of a finger
working. I thought that was just brilliant, I mean it was just awesome.”
When discussing evidence in the taxonomy unit, the teacher asked the
students to point out a strong piece of evidence that links the octopus and
the snail. Using the list of available evidence, one student mentioned that
both the octopus and snail have something that develops into a mouth.
The teacher provided positive feedback: “I think that is so fabulous that
whoever picked that one out, you were really going beyond. So that’s embryonic development and that embryonic development shows the connection that these develop the mouth and that develops the anus.”
Finally, teachers also used positive feedback at the close of the unit in order to reflect on students’ progress in conceptual and skill development.
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For instance, after finishing the lead unit, one teacher recollected the
content (i.e., osmosis, diffusion) and skills (i.e., creating and evaluating
models, evaluating evidence) students developed. In general, teachers
employed positive feedback in ways that may have fostered autonomy given that their feedback recognized a progression in students’ thinking and
idea improvement.
Expectations
Teachers communicated high expectations that students could be successful when initiating ideas. Given the challenging nature of inquiry tasks, high
expectations may provide much-needed support for competence as well as
autonomy. Teachers conveyed high expectations at the start of the unit: “I
know you didn’t know much about cell organelles [the previous unit] and
you did a fabulous job with it.” Teachers also expressed confidence in the
students before starting a particular task: “What I would like to do, since
you did such a great job last time when the students led the discussion . . .
we are going to do that again.” This type of feedback is essential if teachers
expect students to take on the responsibility for the cognitive work involved
in generating ideas when reasoning, analyzing, and evaluating.
Negative Feedback
The provision of criticism may inhibit autonomy when the negative
feedback is specific to student-initiated ideas. Some teacher feedback was
comparative of students’ capabilities, while other uses voiced low expectations for students’ capabilities. During a discussion of the two taxonomy
models, one teacher called on a student to read aloud their best model
choice, “Umm, you read yours; it’s not perfect, but at least we hear some
things.” While the teacher provided some positive feedback following the
student answer, the initial comment may have inhibited autonomy by prejudging the correctness of their response. In a second example, a teacher
read aloud answers from a previous lesson before administering a pretest,
“I’m gonna read a couple answers here. Not that I’m making fun, but this
is what I don’t want to hear from you.” These practices were comparative
of student work and voiced low expectations.
Cognitive Autonomy Support
Curriculum Tasks
As specified in the method, curriculum tasks afforded cognitive autonomy support. Thus, at one level, students were afforded autonomy support
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through the opportunities provided by assigned curriculum tasks. In these
results, we detail the role of teacher enactment in highlighting these task
elements. We observed that one set of teacher practices highlighted the
cognitive autonomy-supportive features afforded to students by developing
and revising explanatory models. Teachers explicitly discussed the opportunities to initiate and develop ideas when creating models. For instance one
teacher discussed the benefits of students’ models for sharing initial ideas:
T: So, we are going to start as we start any scientific endeavor by
doing an initial model. Now do you have a lot of evidence at this
point? No. So this is the part of science that’s a little bit creative.
You can kind of think of ideas that you like and that you think . . .
based on what you know . . . and share those ideas. And then as we
go along and get more evidence, you are going to have to kind of
move much more closer [sic] to fact and refine your model based
on the evidence.
Also note how the teacher forefronts how students will be responsible
for revising their models based on evidence, with the process of revision
affording cognitive autonomy support. Following this teacher during the
lead unit, we observed that she continued to make statements about the
process of revision and students’ own opportunities for deepening their
initial model through the inclusion of evidence, mechanisms, and reasons. For instance, the teacher explained the benefits of students’ inclusion of mechanism to deepen their explanatory models:
T: So, something I want to talk about that you should have in your
model. The first thing is that your model should have what’s called
a mechanism. A mechanism explains exactly how it happens. So
some of you told me that using the mass evidence, osmosis happened. Water moved from where there was more to where there
was less. The mechanism would be the next step - why. Well, that’s
osmosis; it’s the ways water moves. Also, why did the water squeeze
through and the syrup didn’t? That is all explaining on a deeper
level what happened. How many people did that in their models?
Explained how the water moved and also what went through and
what didn’t go through? [Students raise their hands.] Yeah, a couple
people did. So what I want you to do today is you are going to go
back to your model and answer these questions to make sure that
it [your model] has a mechanism.
Throughout, the teacher emphasized students’ ownership of their models and their responsibility for improving and deepening its explanatory
power through revision.
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Another practice for fostering cognitive autonomy support was to maintain the open nature of the tasks as specified and intended by the curriculum. Teachers maintained open tasks by enacting recommended opportunities for students’ initiating model development, analysis, and inclusion
of evidence, rather than modifying these tasks such that students simply
include teacher-presented explanations. Students also had the responsibility for planning how they would go about solving the task or integrating
key evidence. Moreover, students were responsible for refining ideas with
the teacher providing guidance while leaving the question open.
Participation Structures
Teachers introduced participation structures to classroom interaction in ways
that facilitated opportunities for students to engage in discussion around
evidence, reasons, and competing explanatory models. In addition to collaborative reasoning seminars (see curriculum context), one teacher supplemented the curriculum by introducing debate as a participation structure.3
To characterize how debate encouraged cognitive autonomy, we draw on the
debate fostered after students evaluated the university students’ models for
how lead enters the cell. To initiate the debate, students selected their positions by deciding which university student’s model was the worst (and later
the best). Students moved to designated sections of the classroom to indicate
which “side” of the debate they represented. Rather than assign a position,
students experienced initial feelings of autonomy through the opportunity to decide which model to defend. Next, each group of students had the
chance to persuade the other teams by justifying their position regarding the
strong and weak qualities of the curriculum’s models using criteria. Thus,
the debate organized classroom interactions around student reasoning and
argumentation as students presented a position (or claim), a justification for
their claim, and an argument for and against other’s positions.
Students were also responsible for organizing the content of the discussions, as they initiated how to recognize the best and worst models. While
students were responsible for the content of the debate, the teacher’s role
was to facilitate the discussion. Here, the teacher ensured students provided justifications after stating their positions and that there was time
for students to agree and disagree with each other with accompanying
reasons. For instance, the teacher initiated the debate by challenging students to justify their views:
T: So . . . right now everybody thought B and C are excellent models and that D, E, and A are the worst. So now I’d like to give your
guys the opportunity to try and convince us why you feel these are
the worst. So, let’s start.
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As the debate continued, the teacher continued to facilitate dialogue
when students expressed disagreement with a group’s model selection.
The teacher pressed for evidence and rationale for voiced disagreement:
T: They may be wrong. But you can’t just say they are wrong,
you have to use evidence to convince us that they are wrong. So
listen to what they say and you guys first, S, you’re the first one
to start trying to convince them that they are wrong. You are going to try and help them the error of their ways, if there is one.
Together, this participation structure, coupled with accompanying
teacher questions pressing for rationale from representative teams,
worked to promote students’ cognitive autonomy.
Another observed participation structure employed by another teacher was small group-led discussion. This structure was observed after the
students evaluated the university students’ models. Here, the students
engaged in a final model ranking together in small groups. Next, the
teacher called for one student group to lead the class discussion. In this
case, students again had the opportunity to experience cognitive autonomy, because they were responsible for initiating and guiding the content ideas brought to the floor, rather than the teacher:
T: What I would like to do, since you did such a great job last
time when the students led the discussion . . . we are going to
do that again. Just a reminder about how things should go. The
group in the front should kind of be getting things going; telling
the class their opinion and also asking the class “do you agree? . .
. do you disagree?” As a class, you should be giving the people in
the front your undivided attention and also help them out and
learn from each other by participating. So, I want to see lots of
people with their hands up, with things to contribute. Challenge
each other. OK?
The teacher’s role in this type of participation structure was as a
guide to ensure that the conversation remained focused on the point
by asking, “What do you think of that? Do you agree with their reasons? What are their reasons?” The discussion was shaped to move toward class consensus regarding the best and worst models as supported
by evidence. Further, the teacher made explicit calls to listen to each
other, learn from each other, and challenge each other. When teachers set up discussion exchanges between students, it supports cognitive
autonomy by allowing the students’ final ranking decisions and justifications to direct discussion.
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Eliciting Students’ Thinking
Teachers used questioning in ways that fostered cognitive autonomy support by eliciting students’ initial models or evaluations of presented arguments, with follow-up questions used to encourage elaboration and
clarification of these ideas. Questions included, “What do we have as our
best model?”; “You think that’s possible? That the octopus is more closely
related to the snail or more closely related to the starfish? Which [model] do you think?” These questions are important for facilitating cognitive autonomy, because they evoke students’ thinking and contributions.
Moreover, the framing of the questions conveys that the aim is to hear and
clarify students’ ideas as the starting place for consideration, rather than a
predetermined or accurate response. Teachers’ questions did not stop at
accessing ideas but followed up with asking students to justify and explain
their thinking based on their prior experiences, the presented evidence,
and their current understandings of mechanism. For instance, “You gotta
give me more specifics than that” and “You need to say why you think that.
You need to say what evidence is there that you’ve seen between the two
okay? . . . I need you to give me some reason, some supporting details.”
Here, teachers’ questions ensured that students’ ideas were central to class
discussion and content representation.
The following exemplar showcases how teachers used questions to access students’ ideas, which then became the starting place for explanation, evaluation, modification, or refuting. Students were asked to persuade their peers why their selected university student’s model was the
best representation of how lead enters the cell. At first, the teacher uses
brief prompts to elicit the students’ selected model and their rationale
and follows up by restating the student’s main point:
T: OK so now you guys are over by [model] C and you guys think
that this is working the best to explain it. Can you guys explain
why?
S: Because it shows you how it [lead] gets into the cell and where
it goes to get in.
T: So, when you have lead, little people with hammers get into
your body and attack your cells?
Ss: Yes (giggling).
As the class takes up this group’s claim, the teacher continues to question students, urging them to explain why this model is a high-quality explanatory model by saying, “You need to explain to me this whole little
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people attacking the cells” and later by pressing for evidence: “You haven’t
offered any evidence to support your view when you explained that.”
Teacher questions that encouraged students to present, clarify, and then
justify their ideas fostered cognitive autonomy.
Another observed practice was teachers’ use of guiding questions to
prompt and focus students’ thinking in ways that fostered their cognitive
autonomy. These questions served to guide students toward ultimately
thinking about their ideas, as demonstrated in this exemplar. Students
were examining two alternative models for whether starfish or octopi are
more closely related to the snail. Students examined evidence to inform
their decisions about which model has more explanatory power. Early in
the lesson, the teacher uses questions to help guide students in how to
think about using this evidence and evaluating the evidence as weak or
strong in ways that inform their own selection among these models:
T: This doesn’t mean that this [model] is right at all; this is evidence that you’re given and you have to decide if it strongly supports, it supports, or contradicts it. Right? There’s no right answer
there. You have to make a decision, they’re not telling you that
is what it is. Well how would you respond to that? Let’s see how
you do now. The octopus and the snail are both very slimy. Is that
true?
Ss: Yes.
T: They have a mucus layer. (T provides an example from a movie
about giant octopus that was slimy and says that the whole body
of the octopus is covered in mucus material. T continues) Starfish
are not slimy, true or false?
Ss: True.
T: How strong is the evidence for model one? And you would
decide whether if you think it’s weak, strong, or somewhere in between. So model one, is that a good piece of evidence to say that
octopus are more closely related to starfish than the snail, or is it
a weak piece of evidence?
Ss: Weak
T: Weak.
These questions act as a scaffold and are considered supportive of cognitive autonomy because they guide students toward how to think about
their own initiated ideas.
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Encouraging Self-Regulated Learning (SRL)
Beyond encouraging students to develop their content ideas, teachers
generally enacted curriculum tasks as intended to encourage students to
be responsible for their own thinking and learning. When students are
responsible for self-monitoring and evaluating, they likely view themselves
as having a role in developing and revising their ideas. As part of these
units, students had available a set of standards and criteria for use in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their evolving explanatory models and
arguments. During the cell membranes unit, students worked to develop
shared class criteria that differentiate high quality relative to lower quality
models. The taxonomy modules introduced criteria for the development
and evaluation of good versus poor arguments.
One exemplar that helps forefront how a curriculum lesson coupled with
a teacher’s practice provided cognitive autonomy support via encouraging
SRL stems from a lesson in the cell membranes unit focused on refining the
class-established criteria. More specifically, teachers worked to involve students in the development and refinement of the shared standards and criteria. For instance, in the introductory lesson to the cell membrane module
students set criteria for good models by examining university students’ models that ranged in quality and were developed to explain how lead got into
cells. Students were asked to identify the best and worst model and discuss
the characteristics of the models that explained their rankings. One teacher
first engaged students in a whole-class discussion about their rankings and
what made a good versus poor explanatory model. During this prolonged
discussion, the teacher kept track of the students’ voiced characteristics on
the chalkboard, making a “good and bad list.” Subsequently, the teacher
worked with students to synthesize and transform this constructed list into a
checklist that students could use to self-evaluate. Finally, the teacher encouraged students to work within their pair to apply the checklist on each other’s
initial models, as demonstrated here:
T: What I would like you to do now is take your model . . . and go
down the checklist. I want you to be honest with yourself. I would
much rather have you actually not write an X for something you
didn’t do than write a check and you didn’t really do it. Part of this
is learning how to assess your own work and to realize when you
did or didn’t do something. And it’s ok to be honest. No one’s going to be mad at you or angry. So . . . so do this for yourself, then
as a pair you’re going to talk about it and you’re going to look at
both models, so maybe S and S will look at S’s model first and talk
about the checklist and S might say, “S, I don’t think you included
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all this, so you might want to put an X there.” And then you’ll look
at the other partners. Then I want you to include any changes on
the back or if you want to do it on the actual front side, you have
to use another color.
Subsequently, students had opportunities midunit and at the end of the
unit to monitor and evaluate their own and peer’s models using these criteria.
Another practice that encouraged student’s SRL was reminders to use
criteria as well as making available rubrics with the class-established criteria for self-monitoring and evaluation. The criteria were made available
and displayed within the classroom for students’ use throughout the unit.
Teachers reminded students to use the criteria to assist in planning and
initial model development. We also observed teachers reminding students
where the rubrics were located in the room often and encouraged the use
of them to evaluate their models:
S: I don’t know how what to write for this.
T: Did you get a rubric? Get a rubric and use that criteria to help
you. There’s a rubric up there that we made. So, if it fits the criteria, it must be good.
When students are held responsible for self-monitoring and evaluating
their own evolving explanatory models, teachers encourage SRL in ways
that facilitate cognitive autonomy.
Finally, it is notable that the curriculum and teacher practice also incited students to view themselves as accountable to their peers. Evaluating
peer models and being accountable to peers provides cognitive autonomy
support because it encourages students to view their contributions and
models as emanating from their own cognitive work rather than from the
teacher. In fact, some teachers made this issue of peer accountability explicit, “We did model criteria earlier on in the year; we are going to go
back to that; we are going to use that; we’re going to hold each other
accountable for using it. So if we say ‘that it explains everything well’ you
better make sure that yours and your classmates explains everything well.”
These messages conveyed that monitoring each other’s use of criteria and
reasoning was a shared responsibility, and that the teacher was not the
only one with a final word/evaluation.
Low Cognitive Autonomy Support
The enactment of frequent meaningful autonomy support was not without
its tensions and challenges. It is critical to highlight that instances of low
autonomy support were infrequent, particularly relative to high-quality
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autonomy support (see Descriptives). However, the provision of cognitive
autonomy support via curriculum tasks and instructional enactment presented some tensions teachers worked to navigate. While teachers worked
to resolve these problems of practice, the solutions at times meant limiting
access to cognitive autonomy supports.
One observed practice was teachers cutting short whole-class and smallgroup discussion that involved developing student ideas (i.e., cognitive
autonomy supportive). Whole-class exchanges would be underway, and
teachers started employing leading or closed questions in ways that ultimately led to their providing an answer. For instance, during a lesson in
which students were responsible for generating a list of similarities and
differences between snails and octopuses, the teacher culminated the discussion with a response, with limited time for student dialogue:
T: Let us make a list of similarities and differences between snails
and an octopus. Who has some ideas?
S1: One lives on land, the other one lives in the ocean.
S2: One animal [the octopus] is bigger.
T: Let’s not worry about size because they’re [the curriculum]
talking about the garden snail and blue-ringed octopus which are
both small.
S3: They’re both slimy.
S4: The snail has a shell.
T: I always am amazed. ‘Snail has a shell’—that is so obvious. That
would’ve been my second thing. My first one still isn’t up there.
What’s another difference?
S5: Snails have eyes coming out of their head.
T: That’s not the one I would’ve come up with…
S6: Which one was yours?
T: Octopus has many arms and legs. A snail has a shell, octopus
doesn’t. Those are the two obvious ones.
Notice that the opening question invited a range of student ideas, with
no specified end point. During the exchange, the teacher begins to make
evident that there is a salient similarity and difference between octopus
and snail that is expected. When the teacher finally gives the answer, this
serves to close off and end the discussion.
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In other observed cases, teachers used their lesson time to let the discussion go long, which allowed for student-initiated ideas but left insufficient
time for the teacher or students to raise the key point or synthesize the lesson. In the example below, the teacher quickly shifted from the prolonged
discussion of the highest quality university-student’s models to ending dialogue without synthesizing key points (i.e., summarizing characteristics of
high quality models):
T: So you propose the tear model . . . but if it [lead] tears into the
cell wouldn’t the cell be destroyed?
S: (inaudible)
T: Oh, this is really important. You just did something really cool—
you modified your model on the fly. T talks about the different
models mentioned by various students and how it explains different pieces of the model—how combining models is good. Everyone
needs to stop . . . everyone needs to come up here really quickly.
Cutting short discussion may influence students to perceive the teacher
as providing the conclusion and synthesis. This may translate into a cost
for deep-level engagement as students may no longer engage in the cognitive work necessary to come to these points of conclusion. In contrast,
when teachers let discussions go long, students lose access to key points
via synthesis. While students experience that they are leading the content
discussion, without the guidance provided by synthesis, the full benefits of
cognitive autonomy may not be realized.
Another risk is that some instructional moves may be perceived as nonresponsive. Nonresponsive practices involve teachers not directly acknowledging or responding to a contribution. In other cases, teachers seemed
to have a response they were expecting, and alternatives or inaccurate
answers were passed over. In the earlier example of the lesson, the teacher’s inconsistent inclusion of ideas or awaiting an anticipated response
conveyed a dismissive tone. While the practice may have the intention
of accessing accurate content representation, it may inhibit cognitive autonomy as the teacher is responsible for the answers and specific student
contributions are not integrated.
Discussion
Recent theoretical advances have developed conceptualizations of autonomy-supportive practice, but accompanying classroom research using
these theoretical frameworks has detected infrequent autonomy practice
as well as a tendency toward less significant academic choice (Bozack et
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al., 2008; Stefanou et al., 2004; Turner et al., 2011). Research stemming
from self-determination theory is conducted in laboratory settings deliberately designed to include boring tasks and “minimal embellishments”
(Cordova & Lepper, 1996). Current conceptualizations of autonomy-supportive practice are likely constrained by these contexts.
In the current research, we extended past work by observing enactment
in an inquiry-oriented context that offered a broader range of autonomy,
with the aim of mapping existing conceptualizations onto the behaviors of
real teachers. Second, we aimed to articulate varying ways in which teachers facilitate autonomy support, with an interest in raising the bar of quality descriptions of autonomy-supportive practice. Third, by identifying and
describing a fuller range of autonomy-facilitative practice as evidenced in
teachers’ enactment, we aimed to enhance the validity of the construct
(Patrick et al., 2001) and provide more guidance for teachers seeking to
enhance their provision of autonomy support.
Overall, relevant to these contributions, our results support three primary
conclusions. First, in comparison to published work in noninquiry environments, our observations yielded a higher frequency of autonomy-supportive
practice. Most significant is the higher frequency of cognitive autonomy
support, because prior research found little evidence of this academically
significant form in traditional classrooms. Second, we built from existing
frameworks to describe practices that reveal new upper end points for
autonomy support dimensions and new subdimensions of autonomy-supportive practices. These academically significant distinctions ultimately
contribute by enhancing the validity of the autonomy support construct
in ways that align with its roots in fostering student agency and relevance.
Finally, we provide thick description and examples of how real classroom
teachers enact supportive practices in ways that can inform professional
development. These descriptions provide clearer illustrations of and guidance for how teachers can support higher levels of student autonomy.
Specific to frequency, we observed ample evidence of teachers’ autonomy-supportive practice within this inquiry curriculum context relative to
previous research (e.g., Bozack et al., 2008). Importantly, the prevalence
of autonomy-supportive practice was observed across dimensions, indicating that teachers were not only providing more procedural and organizational support but provided a broad range of autonomy supports. Moreover,
descriptive data indicated that cognitive autonomy support was the most
prevalent practice, showcasing beginning evidence of academically significant choice. There was evidence for some autonomy-inhibitive practices,
but these were less frequent, with the exception of low cognitive autonomy.
Beyond indicating that teachers enacted more autonomy-supportive
practices, we found that the autonomy-supportive practice provided was
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multifaceted and sustained over time. Our results that differentiated practices by lesson and by quartile indicated that teachers drew on several
dimensions of autonomy-relevant practices within a lesson. In addition,
teachers did more than make brief statements early in the unit or lesson; rather, they employed motivating practices over the course of the
lesson. Critically, our results extend beyond frequency information alone
to highlight and describe how teachers employed a variety of meaningful
autonomy-enhancing practices in an inquiry curricular context. We turn
now to a detailed discussion of those findings.
Modifying the End Point of Autonomy Dimensions
We build from extant conceptualizations by thickly describing practice
within each autonomy-relevant dimension (see Table 3 for results summary). These examples and descriptions enrich current conceptualizations
by extending the range within each dimension to add moderate- and highquality conceptualizations of autonomy support. More specifically, our examples can be interpreted as raising the upper endpoints of these ranges
to incorporate higher quality forms of autonomy support. It is through
this access to higher quality conceptualizations of autonomy support that
we enhance the meaning and validity of the construct itself.
To examine how this extends past research, and the implications for
construct validity, it is informative to draw comparisons with previous operationalizations, conceptualizations, and examples drawn from research
in traditional classrooms and laboratory settings (see Table 3). For example, in past research, autonomy-responsive practices have been evidenced
by duration of time teachers fully attended to students (i.e., number of
seconds) coupled with brief acknowledgments of a contribution (i.e.,
“Yes, you have a good point”) (Bozack et al., 2008; Reeve & Jang, 2006).
Our observations extend this conceptualization to include practices in
which teachers integrate students’ own phrases in their responses, build
and elaborate on student contributions, and revisit students’ ideas during discussion. These forms of responsiveness do more than communicate “I hear you”; they convey that students are initiators of central ideas
that warrant comment, response, and reaction by teachers and classmates.
Moreover, when teachers draw on students’ own ideas to represent content and set expectations for peer accountability, they communicate that
ultimately it is not solely the teacher who contributes to developing ideas.
As observations provide exemplars more closely associated with the root
of autonomy—specifically, students’ experiences as agentic members of
the classroom community—this contributes to an increasingly valid conceptualization of autonomy support.
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Table 3. Summary of Observed Autonomy-Supportive Practices and
Comparison With Prior Research
Dimension
Conceptualization
Practices From Past
Research
Practices From Current
Research
Organizational
and procedural
autonomy
Involving students in
decision making related to procedures
and task format.
Seating arrangements
relative to materials
Participate in classroom
rules; due dates for assignments; choose group
members
Display work in an individual manner (format;
color); discussing Ss
wants; handling materials; choose materials for
class projects
Informing decision
of which group leads
discussion
Selecting partners
Decision whether/how
to use color to represent
model revision
Choice of activity after
completing assigned work
Rationale and
relevance
Introducing lesson
or task purpose
and connecting to
students’ personal
interests, values, and
goals.
Rationale accompanied
by acknowledging boring
uninteresting nature of
the task
“How about we try the
cube, because it is the
easiest one”
Ex: “Doing this activity
has been shown to be
useful because . . . ”
Contextualizing unit content through introducing
to driving question or
other context
Connecting concepts to
everyday experiences
Revisiting connections to
relevant context
Highlight interestingness and relevance of
examples during content
representation
Building toward key lesson points using students’
examples
Introducing lesson coherence to prior lessons
Responsiveness
Listening to students
and responding to
questions.
Ex: “Yes, you have a good
point” and “Yes, right,
that was the second one”
Seconds the teacher carefully and fully attended
to the student’s speech,
as evidenced by verbal or
nonverbal signals
Restating students’ point
prior to T elaboration.
Eliciting clarification
and extension from
students to ensure T
understanding
Using students’ own
phrases and ideas in
responses and when
elaborating on students’
ideas
Drawing on students’
ideas in content representation and to make
key lesson points
Reintegrating Ss ideas
& explanations in
discussion
*Encouraging peer
responsiveness
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Dimension
Conceptualization
Practices From Past
Research
Practices From Current
Research
Feedback
Offering encouragement when students
show effort &
persistence.
Recognizing/praising mastery and
progress.
Ex: “Good job” and
“That’s great”
“Almost,” “You’re close,”
and “You can do it”
Recognizing new contributions and evolving
ideas; Ss comments
that advance the class
discussion
Coupling informational
feedback with a task
focus, and potential for
improving
Conveying high expectations prior to challenging
work
Whole-class feedback
reflecting skill and
conceptual development
during the unit.
Cognitive
autonomy
Encouraging
students’ ownership
related to ideas,
strategies, thinking
and learning.
Ex: Multiple approaches,
strategies on problems;
time for decision making/pacing; justify solutions; be independent
problem solvers; debate
Reevaluate errors and
evaluate their own or others solution ideas
Formulate personal goals
and re-align to correspond with interests
Informational feedback
T listening time; Ask
questions
Making explicit how
curriculum tasks foster
students developing &
revising explanatory
models
Maintaining open curriculum tasks (a) with
more than a single right
answer, (b) opportunities
for self-direction, choice
and decision making, (c)
grounded in studentinitiated ideas and theories, and (d) requiring
explanation, justification
and synthesis
Facilitating student-student discussion by asking
students to respond to
one another
Eliciting students’ initial
models and model evaluation, so their ideas are
central to further debate,
discussion, and alternative solutions
Guiding questions to
support students in thinking about, elaborating,
clarifying their ideas
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Dimension
Conceptualization
Practices From Past
Research
Practices From Current
Research
* Encouraging selfregulated learning by
(a) involving Ss in the
development of criteria
for model development
& evaluation; (b) making reminders to use
codeveloped criteria for
evaluating models and
arguments; and (c) transforming criteria into rubrics for Ss self-evaluation
*Encouraging peers to
hold each other accountable for use of criteria
Note: * denotes a new differentiation within a dimension
New Subdimensions of Autonomy Support
In addition to enriching theories of autonomy support by extending the
range, we also introduce three new autonomy-supportive practices that
elaborate existing theoretical differentiations (designated with asterisks,
see Table 3). More specifically, we introduce teachers’ encouragement of
self-regulated learning (SRL) as part of the cognitive autonomy-support dimension. SDT highlights that self-initiated and regulated student actions
reflect autonomous motivation, but previous work has not identified support for students’ SRL among identified autonomy-supportive practices.
When students have opportunities for monitoring their own conceptual
understanding, and how this understanding develops and improves, students gain responsibility for tracking their own idea development. Given
that promoting students as originators of ideas and strategies is central to
autonomy-supportive practice, encouraging SRL focused around making
intellectual progress nicely fits with this conception. Teachers facilitated
SRL by working with students to develop criteria for what makes a good
model and by reminding students of class-developed publicly available criteria for evaluating students’ evolving models as well as providing rubrics
for self-evaluation of models that were based on the class-developed criteria. Our research evolves the role of the autonomy-supportive teacher
from one who creates the time and space for students to work their own
way (e.g., open tasks) (Reeve & Jang, 2006) to one of actively supporting
students’ regulation of their developing ideas. At a more general level, our
study extends motivation research by establishing a link between supports
for SRL with autonomy. Here, we do not interpret facilitation of students’
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SRL as unique to an autonomy-support framework but as fostering positive motivation and engagement broadly, including students’ competence
and endorsement of mastery goals.
Our findings indicate that teachers’ promotion of the role of peers
should also be integrated into autonomy-support dimensions. In particular, we saw evidence of teachers calling for peers to be responsive to one
another and for holding one another accountable to shared disciplinary
practices (e.g., criteria for developing and evaluating models) (also see
Gresalfi et al., 2009). Both practices shifted attention from the teacher
controlling the discussion and conceptual ideas to encouraging fellow
students to have authority over the content (Chinn et al., 2001). Past research has highlighted the autonomy affordances of working in collaborative groups, given students’ enhanced responsibility for learning (Rogat
et al., 2013). These findings extend this conceptualization by calling for
more than time away from the teacher to more proactive peer responsibility for one another. Further, the identified facilitating role of peers
forefronts the need to better account for their role in shaping motivation.
Practice Embedded Within an Inquiry Curricular Context
Our observations of more frequent, multifaceted, and academically significant conceptualizations of autonomy-relevant practices are due to investigating teacher enactment within an inquiry-based curriculum context
with several supportive features (see Method and Table 3). Curricula with
autonomy-supportive features may encourage teachers to enhance their
own understanding of the range and quality of means for motivating their
students. For example, curriculum tasks designed to elicit and build on
student-initiated ideas, such as evolving explanatory models in response
to a contextualizing problem, afford higher quality motivating practices.
Second, teachers worked to highlight and make explicit the autonomyrelevant features of curricula. For instance, teachers connected content
to the unit’s driving question and provided rubrics for students to selfevaluate their models using shared criteria based on disciplinary norms.
In addition, teachers focused students’ attention on task features that supported students’ opportunities to develop, initiate, and revise ideas.
We suggest the need to consider extending research beyond traditional
classrooms and laboratory settings to include observations in reform-oriented learning environments in ways that inform more richly conceptualized autonomy and raise the bar of quality practice. We do not claim to
have observed the highest quality practices and suggest that there is room
to move forward in the range for each dimension. One issue is that facilitating students’ autonomy needs was not the main focus of this curricular
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project nor were specific professional development sessions focused on
autonomy-supportive enactment (see Turner et al., 2011, for example). It is
notable that teachers’ professional development included extensive discussion of giving students ownership of the development of ideas, but we still
find there is room for a more explicit tie-in to autonomy. Future research
might work to optimize teachers’ enactment through deliberate attention
to curriculum and task design as well as close work with educators.
Tensions Explain Low Cognitive Autonomy Practice
It is important to recognize that we identified instances of low cognitive
autonomy support, although this practice was approximately half as prevalent as cognitive autonomy support. There seem to be two main tensions in
fostering cognitive autonomy that may explain its frequency. First, we observed enactment challenges for teachers who encouraged students to generate ideas (e.g., eliciting students’ ideas) but then later cut short dialogue
or led students to a teacher-anticipated response. Here, teachers seemed
to culminate open-ended discussion in order to resolve tensions related to
classroom management and content coverage. One challenge is to keep the
lesson pace moving to sustain widespread engagement, given that student
idea development and model revision takes significant time (Stefanou et
al., 2004). A second instructional challenge is allotting time for developing
student ideas while still ensuring key lesson points and accurate content
presentation are made available. Thus, in the above exemplars, teachers
may have cut short discussion to ensure access to the key point.
A second issue regarding low cognitive autonomy concerned teachers
who encouraged student-led discussions in ways that facilitated cognitive
autonomy but who employed minimal guidance in shaping that discussion
or ensuring synthesis at the close of discussion. Teachers may have let discussions go long to foster widespread participation as well as convey that students have a role in developing ideas. Another explanation may be teachers
misconstruing inquiry-based practice as student-centered instruction with
minimal guidance (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). Critically, inquirybased instruction is not necessarily meant to be enacted as discovery-based
learning with a limited teacher role. Rather, inquiry-based instruction is
most successful in promoting learning when teachers provide significant
guidance (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Guidance means modeling new strategies and inquiry skills, providing informational feedback on developing
ideas and skills, and using guiding questions that encourage application,
connection, and synthesis. Our findings suggest that enactment that balances promoting student-initiated ideas with ensuring access to central
ideas and synthesized discussions encouraged cognitive autonomy support.
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Importantly, these results match with extant research indicating that teacher guidance and instructional support are complementary, rather than in
opposition, with support for autonomy (Jang et al., 2010).
Limitations and Future Directions
Our decision to sample lessons midyear had implications for the observed
frequency and instances of autonomy practice. Conducting research in
the beginning of the academic year may have afforded the opportunity
to observe teachers’ messages focused on negotiating classroom rules and
procedures as well as conveying student expectations and accountability.
Similarly, given that students were in their initial exposure to these inquiry modules, teachers would likely have spent instructional time introducing collaborative reasoning and disciplinary norms. To some degree,
once norms are established teachers may not feel the need to review the
motivational benefits of particular curriculum features. These same assumptions are relevant within traditional classrooms. For instance, it is
likely that students may come to expect that they choose their pen color
(i.e., procedural autonomy) without the teacher necessarily referencing this autonomy support for each graphing task. Conversely, midyear
observations may inform the high frequency of cognitive autonomy support afforded because students had become familiar with the curriculum
features, accountability, disciplinary, and participation structures, which
allow for teacher practices to offer this academically significant form of
autonomy support. Future research should be mindful of how the timing
of data collection influences observed practice.
Second, the focus of the presented research was on examining the
range of autonomy-supportive practices teachers use to motivate students
during challenging inquiry-based instruction. However, we did not collect
student reports of autonomy support. Future research should consider
whether students perceive these academically meaningful practices as offering higher quality autonomy support with benefits for sustained deeplevel engagement relative to other curricular contexts. This an important
issue, because it is unclear how students respond to the enhanced degree
of challenge raised within inquiry contexts.
Finally, we have represented autonomy-relevant practices individually,
but we acknowledge teachers use these practices in combination. Arguably,
autonomy-relevant practices are also concurrently enacted with other
motivating practices (e.g., competence support; mastery goal messages).
Correspondingly, presented practices likely facilitate psychological needs
beyond autonomy to include support for competence (i.e., feedback;
eliciting students’ ideas). This interrelation with support for competence
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and autonomy can likely be attributed initiating ideas and developing and
making progress on those ideas as contributing to feeling capable as well
as opportunities for agency (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwak, 2007). We
also worked to capture a broad range of practices, but this analytic decision meant that we did not study any one teacher in depth to characterize
his or her pattern of autonomy-relevant enactment or their balance of
supportive and inhibitive practice. Future research might consider exploring how teachers coordinate and combine the use of autonomy-supportive
and -inhibitive practices, along with other motivating practices, with consequences for students’ motivated engagement.
Implications
Our results present thick description of a range of practices real teachers used to support autonomy. In many cases, we were also able to detect
high-quality enactment that afforded academically significant provision of
autonomy support. Moreover, these descriptions help to put more “meat”
on characterizations for how teachers actually enact autonomy supports
by providing concrete description. Educational leaders, such as school
principals and mentor teachers, who conduct classroom observations
with the intent of providing teachers with feedback for improving student
deep-level engagement and learning, have had to rely on limited available
conceptualizations that only scratch the surface and focus on narrowly
conceived types choice. The dimensions presented here and accompanying description should help to modify these observation protocols to consider a fuller range of autonomy-supportive practice. Moreover, this rich
description and lesson excerpts could be employed within the context of
professional development to assist teachers in extending their working
understanding for affording opportunities for autonomy beyond choice
to consider agency around content ideas, skill development, thinking, and
learning. Certainly, past efforts to promote teachers’ use of autonomysupportive strategies have proven productive (Reeve, Jang, et al., 2004;
Turner et al., 2011), suggesting real potential in deliberate work to enhance quality autonomy practice.
Another implication of this work stems from conceptualizing teacher
practice as embedded within a particular curricular context and set of
classroom interactions (Greeno, 2006; Gresalfi et al., 2009, see Footnote
1). Past work has primarily considered enactment as supplemental to curriculum, perhaps due to the constrained range of autonomy afforded by
traditional classroom activity. As a result, we have minimal available description of the curricular goals, key content and skills, activity, and assessments that help to interpret teachers’ practice in context. In our research,
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by disentangling the role of the curriculum, we were able to identify how
teachers supported autonomy both by highlighting curriculum features
(e.g., reconnecting to an authentic context; identifying opportunities
for revision of models) and via practices that set expectations for student
agency (e.g., teacher responsiveness to students evolving explanations;
accountability to shared criteria for model development). Thus, this research informs the importance of accounting for the relationship among
the curricular context, teacher practice, and the negotiation of agency
when explaining supports for autonomy.
Conclusion
Our findings articulate a broad range of ways classroom teachers foster
autonomy support in ways that enrich extant conceptualizations by both
modifying the end point to include more academically significant autonomy-relevant practices as well as offering new distinctions of autonomy support. High-quality autonomy support was facilitative of students’ agency in
generating and developing their own conceptual ideas both by eliciting
student-initiated ideas as well as by setting the expectations for students
to be responsible for their learning. We introduce encouraging self-regulated learning, peer responsiveness, and peer accountability as new designations of autonomy-supportive practice. This multifaceted enactment
of autonomy-relevant practices was possible because practice was situated
within an inquiry-based curriculum context that expanded opportunities
for student autonomy. Future research should explore how teachers dynamically coordinate autonomy support with other motivating practices.
Notes
1. When conceptualizing autonomy-relevant supports, we recognize that teacher
enactment is part of a larger activity system that also includes interactions among
the curriculum materials and student contributions (Greeno, 2006; Gresalfi et al.,
2009). Teacher enactment is one component of this activity system has been the
focus of prior research. This may be partially due to the primacy of tasks that
constrain the range of autonomy, for instance uniform manipulation of objects
and work toward teacher-provided solutions. In this work, autonomy-supportive
practice has been thought of as supplemental to the available curriculum tasks.
Given the curricular context observed in this study with its autonomy-enhancing
qualities, we consider teacher enactment as embedded within curriculum, with
both resources affording students autonomy support.
2. Description of teachers’ nonresponsive practice are organized under low cognitive-autonomy support given the overlap in these two practices.
3. The teacher practices that accompanied debate and group-led discussion as
participation structures are representative of those autonomy-relevant practices
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Teachers College Record, 116, 070305 (2014)
employed by teachers during collaborative reasoning seminars. For additional description of the autonomy-supportive practices accompanying reasoning seminars,
see Chinn et al., 2001.
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TONI KEMPLER ROGAT is an assistant professor of educational psychology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on understanding motivation and regulatory processes in small collaborative group and wholeclass instructional contexts, particularly inquiry-based science learning
environments.
SHELLY ANNE WITHAM is a graduate student in the Department of
Educational Psychology at Rutgers University and a full-time high school
earth science teacher. Her research interests include teacher practices
and student motivation in science classrooms.
CLARK CHINN is a professor of educational psychology at Rutgers
University. His research focuses on epistemic cognition, argumentation,
promoting growth in reasoning, conceptual change, and collaborative
learning.
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