Effects of performance standards on teaching styles: Behavior of controlling teachers.

Previous research has shown that when teachers are oriented toward controlling rather than supporting autonomy in their students, the students display lowered intrinsic motivation and self-esteem. The present study explored conditions that lead teachers to be more controlling versus more autonomy oriented with students. Impressing upon teachers that they are responsible for their students' performing up to standards leads them to be more controlling than teachers who were told that there were no performance standards for their students' learning. Teachers in the former condition talked more, were more critical of the students, gave more commands, and allowed less choice and autonomy. Considerable research has detailed the processes through which external events can affect a person's intrinsic motivation. In reviewing the evidence, Deci and Ryan (1980) concluded that the central parameter mediating the effects of external events on intrinsic motivation is self-determin ation. In other words, the experience of choice seems to be a necessary condition for the maintenance or enhancement of intrinsic motivation. Events that pressure people toward specified outcomes, thereby denying them the experience of choice, have repeatedly been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation. These events are referred to by Deci and Ryan as controlling. In contrast, events that provide people with meaningful feedback in the context of choice have been shown to enhance intrinsic motivation; these events are referred to as informational. There are two important components of informational events (and thus of events that enhance intrinsic motivation): They must provide choice and they must contain meaningful feedback. By meaningful, we