Teacher Support and Student Engagement in Digital Learning

Student engagement is an important aspect of digital learning. It is energized by motivation and explained by three basic needs in Self-determination theory (SDT). Teacher support distinguished in SDT was widely applied in face-to-face settings, but not digital learning, particularly in K12 context. We know very little how to support the needs of the young children in digital learning. Recently, the founders of SDT also stated that we need more studies to understand how to support students’ needs in digital learning environments. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how well three teacher support dimensions distinguished in SDT – autonomy, structure, and involvement – encourage K12 student behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. In this study, three hundred and thirty Grade Eight students learned for four weeks in distance learning using technology (refer to digital learning in this paper) and finished a questionnaire on perceived teacher support and their engagement. Stepwise multiple regression models were used to analyze the data. The two major findings are teacher involvement is the most influential predictor and autonomy support has less effect. Two plausible explanations are (i) teacher-student relationships are more important in digital learning due to the school nature and (ii) teachers can support autonomy less in digital learning that offers more freedom learning. Experience due to its less structure.