The importance of autonomy for rural Chinese children's motivation for learning

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Motivation in China Autonomous motivation for learning Autonomy-supportive teaching Self-determination theory Two studies applied self-determination theory (SDT) to investigate the motivation for learning of rural Chinese children. The aim was to test whether findings from studies in western individualist cultures would hold up within a very different, eastern collectivist setting. In the first study, when students' autonomous and controlled motivation for a course were entered simultaneously in a regression analysis, autonomous motivation uniquely positively predicted students' perceptions of interest, competence, and choice in the course, whereas controlled motivation uniquely negatively predicted perceptions of interest and choice. In the second study students' perceptions of instructors' autonomy support during the course predicted changes in autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, and perceived competence. These results were discussed in terms of SDT and culture. Over the past few decades, numerous researchers have examined the influence of cultural factors on students' motivation for learning based on the assumption that children acquire their needs, values, and attitudes from their cultures (e.g., Brickman & Miller, 2001). According to this perspective, for example, western individualist cultures such as the U.S. strongly value autonomy so they raise their children to develop a strong need for autonomy, whereas eastern cultures such as China more strongly value the collective so they raise their children to develop a strong need for belonging to the collective, with little or no need for autonomy. Thus, children from collectivist cultures are expected to act in accord with social norms in order to be accepted by the collective. Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000), in contrast, maintains that there is a small set of universal psychological needs, including both autonomy (i.e., volition) and relatedness (i.e., belong-ingness), that are essential for optimal learning and well-being in eastern as well as western societies (e. In other words, SDT proposes that people will be psychologically healthier and more effective in learning contexts to the extent that they satisfy their inherent needs for both autonomy and relatedness. This claim that autonomy is important for individuals in all cultures regardless of their culture's values has led various theorists (e. to be critical of the SDT perspective, implying that it is insensitive to cultural differences, because eastern cultures do not value autonomy. The current study examined children's autonomous motivation for learning in a rural Chinese context, a context in which …