NIE faculty and researchers co-publish a journal article in the Frontiers in Psychology journal

Assoc Prof Liu Woon Chia, Dean of  Office of Teacher Education (OTE) and Associate Professor at the Psychology and Child & Human Development Academic Group (PCHD AG),  Dr Kong Leng Chee, Research Fellow at OTE, Professor John Wang Chee Keng from the  Physical Education & Sports Science Academic Group (PESS AG),  Assoc Prof Kee Ying Hwa, Assistant Dean of Graduate Education by Research at the Office of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning (GPL) and Deputy Head of PESS, and Dr Betsy Ng, Education Research Scientist from the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP),  Office of Education Research (OER), co-published a journal article titled, “A qualitative study into the personal factors influencing secondary school teachers’ motivating styles” in the Frontiers of Psychology journal.

According to the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), when teachers establish an autonomy-supportive climate in their classrooms, their students can benefit in numerous developmentally and educationally important ways. However, many of them are unwilling or unable to carry out these strategies due to various implicit and explicit forces imposed on them by internal and external environments. This paper focuses on the personal factors that influence teachers’ adoption and employment of autonomy-supportive instructional behaviours by implementing a 10-week intervention program on implementing six autonomy-supportive instructional behaviours, and interviewing 59 teachers from 17 secondary schools in Singapore on their adoption and employment of the teaching strategies. From the interviews, the study identified several teacher-related personal factors and through this, it hopes to raise awareness amongst the teachers on the inner forces that can foster or frustrate their own expression of autonomy-supportive instructional behaviours. Given the many plausible benefits that can be derived from autonomy-supportive teaching, the study hopes that the information gained from this qualitative study can path the way for greater willingness and effort in implementing autonomy-supportive teaching in the classrooms.