Education Commons^™

Teachers’ Perceptions Of Motivational Support In Middle School Classrooms: A Multiple Case Study, Cherie Marlene Gibson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Student motivation is central to educational outcomes such as achievement, engagement, well-being, and educational attainment. Current trends in education show that students’ overall level and quality of motivation decline throughout the years of schooling, particularly in middle school. Framed by Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the purpose of this multiple case study is to understand how teachers support the fulfillment of student’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness which is required for active engagement, positive school functioning, and self-determined forms of motivation. Teachers’ sense of efficacy and conceptualizations of their role in supporting their students’ motivational needs were also examined. …

Corporatized Higher Education: A Quantitative Study Examining Faculty Motivation Using Self-Determination Theory, Aaron Dale Brown

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The intent of this research is to offer a quantitative analysis of self-determined faculty motivation within the current corporate model of higher education across public and private research universities. With such a heightened integration of accountability structures, external reward systems, and the ongoing drive for more money and institutional prestige, this study examines faculty attitudes towards their work and the institution using Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory (SDT).

Under the corporatized model of higher education, a gap is found in the literature that explores the role of SDT’s three innate needs (i.e., autonomy, competency, and relatedness) and their effect …

Agentic Engagement, Teacher Support, And Classmate Relatedness— A Reciprocal Path To Student Achievement, Curt Ryan Wakefield

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The present study is informed by self-determination theory and explores the relatively new construct of agentic engagement. Measures of agentic engagement, teacher support for autonomy and competence, and relatedness (teacher and classmate) were collected from 172 high-school students in a three wave short term longitudinal design. Regression statistics demonstrated that (a) initial students’ agentic engagement predicted perceived teacher autonomy and perceived teacher relatedness, (b) perceived teacher autonomy, perceived competence, perceived teacher relatedness and perceived classmate support predicted agentic engagement at the end of the semester and (c) reciprocally mid-semester agentic engagement predicted perceived teacher relatedness at the end of the …