Psychological Development and Education ›› 2013, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (6): 604-615.

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The Associations Between Parental and Teacher Autonomy Support and High School Students’ Development

TANG Qin, FANG Xiao-yi, HU Wei, CHEN Hai-de, WU Meng-xi, WANG Fan   

  1. Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
  • Online:2013-11-15 Published:2013-11-15

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Abstract: During high school, individuals are confronted with developmental tasks centered on issues of: Academic Development, Personal-Social Development, and Career Development. Parental and teacher support is an essential environmental factor in how successfully high school students adapt to these tasks.Here, adolescents' autonomy is particularly important as a great deal of research, based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), demonstrated that adolescents with higher autonomy support from parents and teachers tended to have positive developmental outcomes.However, some researchers are suspicious of the universal application of and emphasis on autonomy in these studies, which have been mainly conducted in Western countries whose cultures highly value individual autonomy. In collectivist cultures, such as China, where obedient and dependent students/children are considered normal and desirable does adolescent autonomy and parent and teacher autonomy support play as significanta role in adolescent development? Furthermore, do parental and teacher autonomy support equally affect adolescents' development? Lastly how do parental and teacher autonomy support interact and if so, what are the results of such interaction? This study aimed to investigate the effects of parental and teacher autonomy support on high school student development in contemporary China. Based on stratified sampling, 4988 adolescents from 16 public high schools in Henan and Yunnan provinces were recruited to participate in this study. Demographic information (including gender, grade, school type), parental autonomy support (PAS), teacher autonomy support (TAS) and academic/personal-social/career development were collected through a self-administrated questionnaire. This data was analyzed using analysis of variance (MANOVA), Pearson correlations and Structural Equation Model. Results were as follows: (1)Concerning academic and career development, girls scored significantly higher than boys, and students in key schools scored significantly higher than those in common schools. Concerning personal-social development, students in key schools scored significantly higher than those in common schools, and the scores of students in grade 11 and 12 were significantly higher than students in grade 10.(2)Not only were all three developmental domains highly correlated with each other, PAS and TAS were also significantly positively associated with all three developmental domains. (3) PAS and TAS could positively predict academic development, personal-social development and career development. PAS better predicted academic development and personal-social development than career development. Compared with PAS, TAS predicted academic development the best and career development the least.(4)The effects of TAS on the three developmental domainswere much more significant than that of PAS. (5)The interactive effects of TAS and PAS significantlyaffected academic and career development. The present study enriched Self-Determination Theory by confirming the predictive effect of autonomy support in a collectivist culture on students' development in three domains. Additionally, adolescents' development in all three domains was more significantly affected by TAS than PAS, a result worthy of additional exploration. The results also suggested that families and schools should come together to create autonomy-supporting environments in order to improve high school students' comprehensive development.

Key words: high school students, parental autonomy support, teacher autonomy support, developmental task

CLC Number: 

  • B844.2
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