Teachers with autonomy-supportive teaching behaviour in honours education
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In excellence and honours education in the Netherlands within secondary vocational education (MBO), higher vocational education (HBO) and higher education (WO), stimulating students' autonomy development is an important goal. An autonomy-supportive teaching style forms an essential part of a teacher’s pedagogical-didactic actions. Literature research reveals that an autonomy-supportive teaching style is still mostly described in terms of broad constructs, based on the student perspective, being open to the student, actively supporting motivation development and supporting self-regulation. However, little has yet been described about the concrete pedagogical-didactic actions of teachers and what kinds of learning environments are facilitative in terms of autonomy support on these four constructs. Using 21 semi-structured interviews with teachers in MBO, HBO and WO, this paper offers concrete insights on the above constructs across three broad themes: the design of the learning environment and facilitation of the teacher, the interpersonal student-teacher relationship, teacher interventions and learning activities both for the group as a whole and individually. The interviews generated a series of concrete autonomy-supportive interventions, such as providing space for student curiosity and teaching students to formulate their own learning goals. This provides teachers with a starting point to design their own teaching and concrete pedagogical-didactic actions to shape autonomy development in their teaching practice.
DOI: 10.31378/jehc.217
Authors: Ron Weerheijm, Eva Voncken
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4408511079