Autonomy-supportive teaching, positive academic emotions, and agentic engagement in EFL contexts

Agentic engagement, defined as students’ proactive and constructive contributions to shaping their own learning processes, has been increasingly recognized as an important yet underexplored dimension of engagement. Drawing on an integrated motivational–affective framework informed by Self-Determination Theory and Control-Value Theory, this study examined how perceived autonomy-supportive teaching relates to agentic engagement among Chinese university students in English as a foreign language learning context, with positive academic emotions as a potential mediating mechanism. A convenience sample of 566 Chinese non-English majors (458 females, 108 males) was recruited from twelve College English classes at a public university in southwestern China. Participants were first- and second-year students with an average of over ten years of English learning experience, representing mixed proficiency levels typical of compulsory EFL instruction. Cross-sectional survey data were collected and participants reported their perceptions of autonomy-supportive teaching, positive academic emotions (enjoyment, hope, and pride), and agentic engagement. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypothesized direct and indirect associations among the study variables. The results indicated that perceived autonomy-supportive teaching was positively associated with agentic engagement. This association was both direct and indirect, operating through positive academic emotions. Enjoyment, hope, and pride jointly mediated a substantial proportion of the total effect, suggesting that positive emotions function as proximal psychological processes linking supportive instructional practices to students’ proactive engagement. The findings demonstrate that autonomy-supportive teaching fosters agentic engagement not only through motivational pathways but also by cultivating emotionally supportive learning environments. By highlighting the mediating role of positive academic emotions, this study advances an integrated motivational–affective account of engagement and provides contextually grounded evidence from Chinese higher education. The results underscore the importance of attending to students’ emotional experiences when promoting learner agency in instructional settings.