PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Fostering students’ motivation is an essential characteristic of every teaching process. However, teachers often lack practical methods to support it in class. There are several approaches to foster students’ motivation, such as autonomy-supportive teaching behavior (ASTB) based on Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017 ). Although t hese approaches are at disposal, they do not seem to find their way into practice. Consequently, efforts are needed to transfer theoretical and empirical findings int o the classroom . An intervention for pre -service teachers providing theoretical and practical approaches to foster students’ motivation might be appropriate to deal with this situation. To address this issue, w e conducted a pilot study with 58 science teacher trainees (M age =25.18±3.79 years ; M semester =7.78±1.23; 65% female). The experimental group consisted of 35 teacher trainees that took part in an intervention about ASTB. Teacher trainee s in the control group (n=23) did not participate in this intervention. We assessed the teacher trainees’ beliefs about the easy implementation and effectiveness of ASTB as well as their future intentions to apply ASTB. Further more , the teacher trainees’ t heoretical and practical knowledge were examined. The r esults reveal ed significant differences concerning the teacher trainees’ beliefs about ASTB, their future intentions to apply ASTB as well as their theoretical and practical knowledge thereof in the comparison of the experimental and control group. We found that the t eacher trainees in the experimental group assumed ASTB to be more effective and eas ier to implement than the teacher trainees in the control group after the intervention . Moreover , the teacher trainees in the experimental group showed higher scores in the test of their theoretical and practical knowledge and stated higher intentions to apply ASTB than the teacher trainees in the control group after the intervention.