Student’s Perspective on (De)Motivational Teaching Approaches in Higher Education

Abstract

Students in higher education are not just passive spectators. Nowadays, we recognize that their own motivation to be, stay, or become an active participant is crucial for lifelong learning. It is up to higher education to support students’ motivation; making students motivated to self-regulate learning can really set them off to great heights. Unfortunately, teachers are not always sure how to get this done. This dissertation can help teachers out. We explored various ways to support students’ motivation, starting from Self-Determination Theory. We took a student’s perspective to provide insights into which teaching approaches are effective – and why. With our studies, we have demonstrated that the social context, as perceived by students, is associated with students’ feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, with their autonomous motivation, and consequently with their academic achievement. Students’ perceptions of their teacher’s (de)motivating teaching approach form a first step in the chain that activates or counteracts academic achievement. Students seem to base their perceptions of their teacher’s teaching approaches not solely on what teachers do; they base their perceptions on the actual teaching behaviors, the nature of the teaching approach, and their general perceptions of the need-supportiveness climate within the educational program or institute. This finding indicates that teachers can focus on the informational nature of the teaching approach to be motivating, but asks for attention for motivational teaching at the individual as well as team level. Motivating students in not just about what teachers do; how they do it might matter even more.