Supporting Autonomy in the Classroom: Ways Teachers Encourage Student Decision Making and Ownership

Abstract In addition to classroom activities, teachers provide personal and instructional supports meant to facilitate the developing sense of student autonomy. In this article, we offer a way of thinking about autonomy-supportive practices that suggests that such practices can be distinguished at a featural level and that different practices may in fact have different outcomes in terms of student classroom behavior. Specifically, we propose that autonomy support can be manifested in the classroom in at least 3 distinct ways: organizational autonomy support (e.g., allowing students some decision-making role in terms of classroom management issues), procedural autonomy support (e.g., offering students choices…