363. Autonomy Supportive Teaching

Posted in classroom community, engagement, higher education, inclusion, instructional communication, learning, pedagogy, teaching
October 16, 2024

Faculty have reported a decline in student engagement during the last few years. In this episode, Jed Locquiao joins us to discuss how the use of autonomy-supportive teaching can increase student motivation and engagement. Jed is an Assistant Professor in the Curriculum and Instruction Department here at SUNY Oswego.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Faculty have reported a decline in student engagement during the last few years. In this episode, we discuss how the use of autonomy-supportive teaching can increase student motivation and engagement.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Jed Locquiao. Jed is an Assistant Professor in the Curriculum and Instruction Department here at SUNY Oswego. Welcome, Jed.

Jed: Hi, thanks for having me.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Jed, are you drinking tea?

Jed: I am. I’ve got a classic, blueberry green tea.

Rebecca: It smells good because we’re actually all recording together in person, which we don’t get to do very often, which is really nice.

John: And I have a spring cherry green tea.

Rebecca: Always a good choice, for some… little known fact, I hate cherry tea.

John: But I have a lot of her old cherry tea now in the office.

Jed: A win.

Rebecca: A win for John, a win for me. [LAUGHTER] I have a good old fashioned Scottish afternoon tea.

John: Very good.

Rebecca: An old favorite, on a day when things [LAUGHTER] aren’t going right, you got to go back to the basics.

Jed: And here a pocket of ignorance on my part. What would that be? A Scottish….

Rebecca: Just, it’s called a Scottish afternoon tea.

Jed: Oh, okay.

Rebecca: a strong tea. [LAUGHTER]

Jed: Okay.

John: We’ve invited you here today to talk about how you have incorporated autonomy-supportive instruction into your classes. First, though, could you define what is meant by autonomy-supportive instruction?

Jed: Thanks for inviting me, John. But yeah, let’s talk operating terms first. So autonomy supportive instruction, it’s behaviors that are often done by a person in authority, in this case, a teacher, where they take on the perspective of someone under their charge, their supervision, in this case, the student, and reduces the extent of demands, of coercion of “you must do” prompts on that particular someone as they go about doing tasks to the maximum extent possible. Autonomy-supportive teaching, then, refers to instructional moves that are student focused from a position of curiosity rather than judgment, and are responsive to students as they engage in those learning tasks just in time. So as they see that students are flatlining, they do something about it. As students have questions, they do something about it. As students seem to be kind of trailing off, not necessarily engaged, they do something about it. It’s being responsive to the students as they are.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about what research says about the benefits resulting from autonomy-supportive teaching?

Jed: That’s a great question. So, with our best empirical evidence, the research points to three major things at the student level, consequences for students and for instructors themselves. For students, autonomy-supportive instruction increases raw achievement. They found that there’s correlative studies that, surprisingly enough, students who feel like they have more choice, more control, more sense of ownership, which are all facets of this thing called autonomy, they tend to do better in schools. Now you might be wondering, what’s the mechanism underneath this, and I think we’ll talk about it later, but it’s motivation. We tend to start and stick with things more when we feel that there’s some sort of personal significance attached to it, when we assign meaning to it, or when it’s just fun, which are both elements of this thing called intrinsic motivation. So at the student level, broad treatment, we also have evidence that speaks to this idea that autonomy increases teacher-student rapport. Students above and beyond say that, hey, this class where the teacher gives me a little bit more choice, a little bit more opportunity to assign meaning, they tend to respond favorably to those teachers. They tend to see them as belonging more in their camp, rather than this us-versus-them sort of relationship. At a teacher level, self efficacy. A lot of teachers who engage in more of these autonomy-supportive instruction feel more competent. They feel that they’re more ready, more prepared to anticipate students, to plan and also to interact and react to students as they are as well. And they also just feel more positive about their teaching craft. Rather than going in and feeling like there’s a cudgel, this sort of pressure bearing down on them, they feel actually a little bit more positive, more ready to take on the day and from one faculty member to another, you know, it’s that sort of switch between, “Oh, I have to go back to work,” versus “Oh, I get to go back to work.” And we have studies that speak to that as well.

John: So you mentioned that this can improve student motivation, and tied that to intrinsic motivation. Could you talk a little bit more about how intrinsic motivation comes into play when you’re engaged in this type of instruction?

Jed: So this autonomy supportive instruction is by and large influenced by this framework called self-determination theory, by Ryan and Deci way back when. And there’s a bunch of mini-theories around it, but the big one was they were trying to figure out, why do some people start and stick with things without clear cut instrumental reward or benefit? Why do people pursue hobbies? Why do people stick with activities where they fail time and time again? I’m gonna draw from my own experience. Why do you keep skiing when you fall face first? What is the mechanism that explains that? There’s no clear cut reward. So they found out over the course of decades of research that, oh, there’s this thing called intrinsic motivation, and what it is is when you’re doing things out of pure fun, interest, and a sense of mastery, that satisfaction of doing things for the sake of doing it. They also found out that there’s other types of motivation called extrinsic, and I don’t want to get all technical here, but extrinsic motivation is on a continuum as well. And on one end, you’re doing things because you’re going to get something. You’re either going to get a grade, you’re either going to get approval from your teacher. And on the other end, you’re doing it because it’s important. It’s a part of who you are. I study because I am a studious sort of student, or I’m the person who will stay up late because I’m the person who won’t let my friends, my groupmates, down, that kind of thing. And what we found is those, and it’s called autonomously regulated motivations, intrinsic and something called identified, those types of motivations, above and beyond, predict robust, optimal, enduring activities. That also translates to learning as well. The students who have somehow managed to get it sooner than later that if I assign personal meaning to this task, if it’s inherently interesting to me, if it’s important to me, or the students who say this is just fun, they tend to do really well, whatever the task is, in work, in life, in leisure, in studying and learning as well. So the reason why we care about the relationship here between autonomy and intrinsic motivation is this, autonomy is one of the nutrients, one of their major claims with this theory is autonomy is one of three major psychological nutrients that are the conditions to those more autonomous motivations. And it would be autonomy, a sense of competency, and connection with others. And of the three, they found that autonomy has the most outsized influence above and beyond.

Rebecca: So, one of the things that I think is often really interesting when we’re interviewing our colleagues is to find out, if we were to go into your classroom, Jed, what would it look like when you are acting in this way, when you’re really incorporating these techniques into your teaching? What does it look like?

Jed: I think we can look at autonomy-supportive instructional practice, or ASI from a planning level and a very moment of instruction level. So at the planning level, I, as much as possible, try to embed choice. If there’s one takeaway, if there’s one major practice or instructional move that you can embed in your practice, it’s choice, choice, choice, choice, choice. And what does that look like? Well, at the planning stage, we have several projects. One of them is a weekly assignment. I think everyone here does a weekly sort of assignment, a check in, an exit ticket, an exit slip. For this exit ticket, what I have is the students can work by themselves, with a partner in groups. They can choose one of 10 different options, modalities, to submit it. It could be your classic exit ticket. It could be a Venn diagram, a graphic organizer. It could be a report. It could be a recording. And then even at the end of all that, they have the option to just tell me if none of those fit, and they can make their own option going forth. So I try to embed choice, or I strive to embed choice at the planning stage, where they have many different means and options to submit assignments. And a big part of our work is also grading assignments on time. I’ve embedded choice in my classes, where they have 24 hours near the end of the semester to submit outstanding items. Now I recognize that poses a lot of [LAUGHTER] risk for me as the instructor, but what I find is, if you give students flexibility for time, they make good on it and they treasure that, they don’t abuse it. At least that’s what I found, knock on wood, so far. So there’s that. At the planning stage asking yourself, “How many opportunities can you embed choice> a sense of ownership?” Oh, yeah. And the prompts themselves and the assignments, I have a list of criteria for the students to address, but after that, it’s really up to them to make sense and to translate those criteria. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, one of the assignments that I have in my class is that they talk about a student and their characteristics and what that means for their instructional practices. That’s it. That’s the criteria. And they can choose any form. They can choose any sort of approach to that. It could be a case study, it could be a mock midterm test. It could be a whole host of different things to speak to that particular prompt. Now, in terms of in-class instruction, I think one of the major moves, instructional moves, that was mentioned by these folks who have researched this, is to verbalize to explain your rationale for why you’re doing things. A big chunk of autonomy is making it meaningful to yourself. And I think we presume that our students know why things are important to begin with. It would help for them to hear an expert other explain why they’re doing a skill, why they’re reviewing a session in the PowerPoint, or why they’re submitting a certain assignment over another. So over the course of my lectures, if you were to stand there as a fly, or whatever a fly does in a class, you’d see me explaining my thinking out loud, verbalizing it. I find myself like, “Am I over talking, or am I over explaining?” But no, no, no, I need to remind myself that us, as a professor, we know a lot more than they do, and it would help for them to hear an expert’s take. We’re going from this topic to this topic because we need to get a handle on this before we proceed any further. Those sort of language statements or, “Hey, you might be wondering where we are at right now. Why are we talking about this? Let me explain to you why this is important.” So the first one major instructional move is to engage in those explanatory rationales. And another major principle that is also shared among scholars, among researchers in this is to use Invitational language, and that could mean stuff like, “I get that this is confusing, and I know why it might be confusing, and let’s talk about that right now.” Or “I totally understand.” Or, “Hey, if this is at all boring to you, or if this doesn’t seem important to you, please share it.” It’s this idea of engaging in Invitational language as well, because the goal is to support internalization, where a student is probably paying attention to the lecture because they must, they have to, and engaging in the sort of language to push that from consequence to “hey, I think there’s something more important to this particular unit, this discussion point,” but yeah, so we can see, at least in my classes, you can see autonomy, supportive instruction at the planning stage a nd at the very moment of instruction stage, embedding choice and inviting the students to take ownership when it’s confusing for them, when they would want more clarification, or when it just seems like it’s not at all important.

John: When I was reading about autonomy-supportive instruction, much of it struck me as things that are talked about in other areas, such as inclusive teaching, the transparency and learning and teaching approach of Mary-Ann Winkelmes, as well as the UDL approach. But what I found distinctive about that was a focus is entirely on giving the student that motivation and the other things are brought in as support. Is that what’s most important about this approach, that sort of focus?

Jed: That’s a great connection, John. Well, let’s take UDL. UDL is about anticipating and designing instruction to the maximum extent possible so it fits everyone. I think we forget in our discussions of UDL, of this crucial piece of motivation. You could set everything up for success for a student, but if they come into that learning activity without any sort of push compulsion to even start it, then there’s no point in like the scaffolding. All the scaffolding in the world is there, but they won’t necessarily enter the space of using it. Motivation is a key piece of that. Because I think if you were to ask any instructor right now, just do a random sample, what’s the biggest issue? It’s disengagement, which is a major issue of motivation. So yeah, absolutely, there’s a connection here. UDL talks about meeting everyone where they’re at. Motivation, saying, all right, you got to meet people at that spark. And crucially, it’s not just a spark, it’s how do you maintain it? How do you keep them engaged? How do you keep them going on despite setback, and the research on motivation helps fill in that gap, I think.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about what research indicates about whether or not participating in professional development on autonomy-supportive instruction has persistent, long-term effects on instruction?

Jed: Like with any teaching skill, it can be learned, but it requires serious self reflection on our part, and a serious commitment to it. And why do I say that? Because a lot of us, when we start out new at this teaching craft of ours, we teach how we learned, and a good chunk of how we learned was through something called the controlling style of teaching, and where, rather than Invitational language, rather than giving choice, rather than the whole set of seven principles associated with this thing called ASI, we tend to try to present coercion, or we try to use demands. We try to tell a person that this is the way that this must be thought and said, and this is the only way of doing things, “my way or the highway” sort of instruction. So it’s hard to break habit. That’s what I’m trying to get at, because we do teach the way we were taught, but thankfully, we have research that speaks to this idea that when you try to change one thing in your practice, even just one thing, something where you say, I’m going to try to give the students more choice in this way, in this assignment… it’s a low-stakes assignment, I’m going to give them choice. We find that once you start that small practice, it tends to go into your other practices. It’s doable. Autonomy-supportive instruction is a skill that we can pick up. I initially taught the way I learned, which was through that controlling style, but I realized that, okay, I want to try relinquishing. So I started out giving options for those exit tickets, low-stakes stuff, and then I started applying it to the bigger stakes assignments as well. And then I started messing around with the assignment expectations, the submission expectations, too. Maybe they don’t have to submit everything week by week. Maybe I can give them two freebies. And I’ve told the students that they can use those freebies strategically, giving them more choice, in recognition that sometimes life happens. Life will happen a lot, and maybe they’re going to be busy during midterm weeks as well. Maybe save it for them. You have choice. You have choice. It was once a little trickle of trying to embed more opportunities, using more Invitational language, giving students more authority of what to do with their time. I’ve actually been telling the students, “Hey, all the readings and artifacts are speaking to the same Idea for that week. You choose your mileage. You choose… make it make sense for you. And I find that the students have responded to that. They seem to be more engaged. Of course, I don’t have hard data on that, but the course eval seem to suggest otherwise. The exit tickets that they speak to seem to suggest so too. But long story short, it’s doable, and I can only point to myself and to the evidence here that other people have said it seems to be malleable, that when you change one thing of your practice to be more autonomy supporting it tends to trickle.

John: I was impressed by the research that suggested that when people did attend professional development on it, that they tended to persist in the practice, which doesn’t always happen, because quite often people will try something. It may work well, but then it will gradually fade out and people revert to their past practice. So it sounds as if this approach is something that the instructors themselves tend to value in terms of being a more enjoyable teaching experience.

Jed: Thanks for bringing that up, John. I want to believe, I want to say, that if you were to walk into our classrooms, or the classrooms that I’ve had the privilege of teaching the past couple years, that they’re loud, that the students are looking at each other eye to eye, that they’re asking questions, raising their hand and asking for follow up over the course of a lecture. Now I can’t guarantee their reading necessarily, but they seem to be coming to class a little bit more engaged than not, and to me, that’s a win. But yeah, I think I can only speak to my own experience here, where, if it weren’t for this, I think I still would be engaging in a very controlling style. I’m so grateful that I just bumped into this particular framework, because when I was starting out, my first teaching assignment was online classes. It was COVID and I was racking my head. How do you reach students? And consistently, the empirical evidence said, you gotta spark their motivation. You gotta attend to motivation. It doesn’t matter if you have the best content. It doesn’t matter if you have the best exercises. They need to get their foot in the door and stay. They need to close the door after them. And motivation was it, especially the work of Ryan and Deci.

Rebecca: So what advice would you give someone who wants to take their first steps in this direction and implement autonomy-supportive teaching?

Jed: Start small, start really small here, and choose one principle at a time for a semester to work on. The practices won’t go away anywhere, because as a faculty member, you have to be everywhere and be everything, but the practices will always be there. So choose one. Choose one. Start small. And I’d encourage you to look at choice, choice, choice, choice at the assignment stage, choice in what I need to do, to show that I’ve done the work and to demonstrate learning. Choice in that way. Choice in submitting that assignment as well, choice and engaging in class. Does a person have to raise their hand? Does the person have to respond by themselves? Could they respond in a group? Could they defer for a later time, like, if they don’t respond this time around, could they be compelled to answer the next time around? That kind of stuff. Do they have to respond in this particular session? That kind of stuff is just giving the students more choice, and then as you do that, the levels of choice, they can get bigger. Like, the stakes could be bigger. Like, do we want to cover this topic right now? The choice could start to trickle and take on different levels of trust between you and the student. You’re asking them to take ownership of their learning. And that oftentimes means saying, ‘Hey, did this make sense? Did our entire last week make sense? Do we want to go back and review it?” It’s increasing the levels of choice for our students, and it starts with that. Just maybe we can give them more options here at this level.

John: Is it possible to go a little too far and give students too much choice? Is it important to maintain some type of structure, because if you just leave it completely up to the students, might things break down and you might lose some of the effect of your expertise, perhaps.

Jed: Oh yeah, what a great, valid question. [LAUGHTER] We’re speaking of this idea of laissez-faire teaching. I don’t think we need to draw too far deep into our memories of a terrible teaching moment where we felt that the instructor was checked out, and if you were to say, “Hey, I need this,” they’d just keep doing on the same thing. I think that’s a major distinction to make. Giving folks more choice is not the same as not paying attention, not responding just in time and going as is. That idea of laissez-faire teaching is just moving on and keeping on. There is an element of seeking more knowledge about the student and responding to this just in time. That’s the first major definition of autonomy-supportive instruction, being present, doing something about it. Now, in terms of professional expertise as the instructor, yeah, we’re there. We have to have guardrails, absolutely but I think the ask is this, are some of our guardrails arbitrary, like submitting things at a certain date? How much of that is crucial to the discipline, the subject? Do we have to use this particular mode, which speaks to UDL? Does our content depend on a midterm exam? Does the sanctity of our subject depend on a five-page essay. That’s what this is saying. Like, can we tether between the extreme of “it must be this way forever” versus “Yeah, sure, whatever. I don’t care.” I think that’s the ask here. With autonomy-supportive instruction is to thread the needle between both extremes and say, “I think we can give you a bit more options for accountability, for ownership, and just really to make this your own.” And how can we embed more of this? It’s asking the students to relate it back to their lives. If you’re a fly in a classroom that embeds this, it’s embedding it and making it more personally relevant for the students and professionally relevant, because you’re trying to support this thing called internalization, assigning significance and importance. But yeah, there is always going to be a place and an expectation for the professional to say, “Yep, here is the limits.” And we got to have some limits here. Absolutely. They ask us how much of those limits are arbitrary.

Rebecca: Structure is really important when there’s choice.

Jed: And as a special education teacher, you gotta have structure. Yeah.

John: It reminds me of something that Kevin Gannon has said in the past about the difference between logistical rigor and cognitive rigor, that we want classes to be challenging, but challenges in terms of the cognitive effort of learning the material, not in terms of arbitrary rules and procedures that do not add to the learning.

Jed: That’s the connection. Yeah. It’s asking yourselves, alright, is this 100% absolutely necessary?

Rebecca: How have students responded?

Jed: Yeah. So in class at the very moment I just came from a class that, and that’s this, their eyes were, I’m looking for all the tells of engagement when I’d ask a question, first time told they respond first time told. When I say “Hey, I want you to take the next few moments to review this artifact in the middle of class,” I see them whip open their books and start clicking and clacking their keys. So the tells seem to suggest that these practices work. One of the exit tickets, I’ll just share this with you. In the first week, they’re asked what’s working for you? What’s not working? And one student said this, “Wow, I have never had so many options before. I am really grateful to have options, and I cannot believe that this is the first class I’ve had where I’ve had these many options.” And it’s not one of those things where it’s like, yeah, sure, pat yourself on the back. But I think it’s one of those things where, alright, here’s a student for whom this seems to resonate for them, and it seems to be a fit for them. And a lot of students, over the course of several sections, seem to be saying the same thing. So straight from the students, straight from the source, it seems to resonate for them, this thing called autonomy-supportive instruction in terms of their achievement, because at the end of the day, this is what we’re about. We want the students to do well. We want them to flourish. I’ve found that no matter what the form, no matter what the approach, the students attend to those rubric criteria. They address them with diligence. They address them with care. And I found that, knock on wood, I haven’t had a serious situation yet in my course sections where you give students choice, they take it. They don’t abuse it. Yet. Keywords as well for student reactions, I had in my notes: shock, relief, and appreciation, and I get minimal-end-of semester grading issues so far. But I have to say, though, the stuff like the 24-hours revise and resubmit, that can get really, really unwieldy too, but rare.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Jed: Sure, Bev’s ice cream, chocolate, vanilla, medium, I’m thinking, it’s a hot day [LAUGHTER] and it’s a beautiful day, so I’m thinking ice cream.

John: Well, thank you. It’s great talking to you again, and we’ll talk to you again in the future. I’m sure.

Jed: It’s a privilege. Thank you so much.

Rebecca: Thank you.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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