Exploring the Pathways Through Which Teacher Support Predicts Changes in Students’ Academic Coping Across the School Year: A Self-Determination Theory Approach

Students regularly encounter challenges and difficulties in their schoolwork. Mounting evidence suggests that the ways they cope with them can make a difference to their subsequent tenacity, engagement, learning, and achievement. To learn more about the factors that can foster productive coping, we conducted a study using a model based on Self-Determination Theory that specifies a set of personal motivational resources (self-appraisals of relatedness, competence, and autonomy) and interpersonal supports (teacher motivational provisions). Results showed that teacher motivational support at the beginning of the school year predicted changes in students’ profiles of academic coping across the year, and all three self-appraisals uniquely and fully mediated these effects. Follow-up analyses of individual coping responses suggested similar mediational patterns, although for some responses the effects of teachers were only partially mediated. Findings highlight the importance of perceived competence and of teacher motivational provisions, which seem to promote coping by supporting students’ needs.