Relationship between autonomy support and students’ school well-being: the mediating role of need for competence

Within a Self-Determination Theory perspective (SDT; Deci and Ryan, 2000), this study aims to examine the relationship between students’ perception of autonomy support provided by teachers and their school well-being (439 students, mean age = 12.2 years; 51% male). SDT proposed the existence of three universal, innate psychological needs of all human beings: autonomy, relatedness and competence. In the school context, the need for autonomy refers to students’ desires to experience a sense of self-determination of their behavior. The need for relatedness refers to students’ desires to experience a sense of connection with teachers and classmates. The need for competence refers to students’ desires to interact effectively with the school environment. The satisfaction of these needs plays an important role in several educational outcomes (e.g. school satisfaction and motivation), particularly when teachers support students’ autonomy, attempting to understand, acknowledge, and where possible, be responsive to students’ perspectives. In the school specific domain, many recent empirical studies have used the SDT as a conceptual framework, to show that an autonomy-supportive teaching style tends to predict adolescents students’ needs satisfaction and school well-being (Ryan and Deci, 2020). Satisfaction of need for competence seems to be a particularly strong predictor of adolescent students’ subjective well-being at school (Tian, Han and Huebner, 2014). According to Tian (2008), subjective well-being in school includes students’ school satisfaction and affect, that is the frequency with which students experience positive emotions. In Italy, research based on the SDT in schools is limited, particularly as regards the effect of students’ needs satisfaction on their well-being. The present paper looks carefully at the mediating role of need for competence considering the relation between the support for autonomy provided by teachers and the adolescents students’ positive and pleasant emotions at school, using a Structural Equation Modelling. The posited model fitted the data quite well: x² = 225 (df = 101), p< .001; TLI = .968; SRMR = 0.037; RMSEA = 0.053, 90% CI [.044, .062]. Results show that a greater perception of support for autonomy has a positive effect on the students’ positive emotions, and this effect is partially mediated by the satisfaction of the need for competence. This finding suggest that students’ psychological needs should be considered and teachers should not only be aware of the importance of autonomy-supportive teaching, but also of how they can improve their teaching style (Vandenkerckhove et al., 2019).