The effects of instructors' autonomy support and students' autonomous motivation on learning organic chemistry: A self-determination theory perspective

This prospective study applied self-determination theory to investigate the effects of students' course-specific self-regulation and their perceptions of their instructors' autonomy support on adjustment and academic performa nce in a college-level organic chemistry course. The study revealed that: ( 1) students' reports of entering the course for relatively autonomous (vs. controlled) reasons predicted higher perceived competence and interest/enjo yment and lower anxiety and grade-focused performance goals during the cour se, and were related to whether or not the students dropped the course; and (2) students' perceptions of their instructors' autonomy support predicted increases in autonomous self-regulation, perceived competence, and interes t/enjoyment, and decreases in anxiety over the semester. The change in auto nomous self-regulation in turn predicted students' performance in the cours e. Further, instructor autonomy support also predicted course performance d irectly, although differences in the initial level of students' autonomous self-regulation moderated that effect, with autonomy support relating stron gly to academic performance for students initially low in autonomous self-r egulation but not for students initially high in autonomous self-regulation . (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.