This dissertation of Tineke Kingma is concerned with honors teachers and how they support students in their motivation to learn. The main focus is on need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behaviors in higher education programs. The purpose is to provide a broader understanding of the context of honors education and the teaching behavior that support the intrinsic motivation of honors students. We examined what factors in teachers' work environments influence their need-supportive teaching behavior. After that teachers were interviewed about their teaching behavior in actual teaching situations in both honors and regular classrooms. Video observations were also conducted to analyze which need-supportive and need-thwarting behaviors teachers used in their honors classes. A special observation tool was developed for this purpose. To avoid fragmentation, we divided lessons into different instructional patterns according to the role of teacher and students in parts of the lesson.
The results of the interview study show that teachers in both honors and regular classrooms respond to students' needs, but that the type and degree of support differs. The observations in honors classrooms showed nine types of behaviors that had not previously been identified in observation studies. In addition, teachers were found to exhibit a broad repertoire of structure-supportive behaviors, and a narrower repertoire for autonomy support and teacher involvement.
A key recommendation is to use the terminology of the observation tool as a pedagogical language in the exchange between teachers. Moreover, teachers can be more intentional in their use of needs-supportive teaching behaviors through the deliberate use of instructional patterns.
