An Autonomy-Supportive Teaching Intervention Benefits Students in a Low-SES School Setting

We conducted the first autonomy-supportive teaching intervention in a low SES school setting. We hypothesized that the teacher-focused intervention would increase students’ psychological need satisfaction and classroom engagement—just as it has been demonstrated to do in previous interventions conducted in more advantaged schools. We randomly assigned 28 Peruvian teachers who taught 14 different subjects (e.g., math) in grades 7–11 in a very low SES school district to participate or not in the autonomy-supportive teaching workshop (i.e., experimental vs. control condition). Their 672 students (332 females, 339 males) self-reported their perceived teacher support, need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, relatedness), and classroom engagement at the beginning, middle, and end of a semester. A structural equation modeling analysis showed that the hypothesized model fit the data well, and that experimental condition predicted students’ T2 need satisfaction, T2 need satisfaction predicted students’ T3 classroom engagement, and T2 need satisfaction mediated the effect that experimental condition had on T3 classroom engagement. These findings show that an autonomy-supportive teaching intervention can work in a low-SES setting and not just in socioeconomically advantaged schools.