Teachers become more autonomy supportive after they believe it is easy to do

Objective: Several carefully designed autonomy-supportive intervention programs (ASIPs) have shown that PE teachers can learn how to become significantly more autonomy supportive toward students. The present study investigated why these ASIPs work. We hypothesized that ASIPs work to the extent they help PE teachers conceptually change their beliefs about how effective and how easy-to-implement autonomy-supportive teaching is. Design: The design was both experimental and longitudinal. Method: Forty-two full-time PE teachers (30 males, 12 females) from 42 different Korean secondary schools were randomly assigned into either an experimental (intervention) or control group, and we assessed three measures of autonomy-supportive teaching as dependent measures and the two beliefs about autonomy-supportive teaching as predictor variables at the beginning and end of a 17-week semester. Results: Teachers in the experimental group showed significant end-of-semester increases in all three measures of autonomy support (etap2 ranged from .23 to .34) and in both beliefs about autonomy support (etap2 ranged from .29 to .39). Most importantly, mediation analyses showed that it was intervention-induced changes in the easy-to-implement belief that fully explained the post-intervention increases in autonomy support. Conclusion: We suggest that ASIPs work by helping teachers revise their belief about autonomy-supportive teaching from “it is hard and difficult” to “it is actually quiet feasible and easy—once one knows how to do it.”