Faculty Behaviors and Teacher Candidate Self-Determination: A Quantitative Examination of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness in Reading Methods Courses

Amid the national shift toward evidence-based literacy instruction and the Science of Reading (SOR) movement, teacher education programs face growing pressure to demonstrate measurable impacts on candidate outcomes. While curricular and assessment reforms have advanced rapidly, the relational and motivational dimensions of literacy teacher preparation remain underexamined. Grounded in and guided by Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1980), this study examines how university faculty behaviors impact preservice teachers’ perceptions of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in literacy methods courses. Participants were 55 undergraduate elementary teacher candidates enrolled in a Science of Reading–aligned course at a Kansas Board of Regents institution. Using a researcher-developed 21-item survey administered via Qualtrics, descriptive and correlational analyses revealed strong, positive associations between perceived faculty behaviors and autonomy (r = .833, p < .001), competence (r = .835, p < .001), and relatedness (r = .773, p < .001). These findings extend SDT research into literacy teacher preparation and provide an empirical foundation for a subsequent qualitative strand of the broader mixed-methods study that informed the development of the HEART framework (Maydew, 2025) for conceptualizing university teacher–student relationships in literacy methods courses.