Page 89 - Kukanja Gabrijelčič, Mojca, and Maruška Seničar Željeznov, eds. 2018. Teaching Gifted and Talented Children in A New Educational Era. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 89
Teacher Strategies to Motivate Gifted Students: A Multiple Case Study on Teacher Behavior
gies. Regarding students’ basic need satisfaction, each individual teacher,
therefore, seemed to meet students’ need for competence to a reasonable
extent. Taking into account the different teaching strategies within this scale,
each teacher also seemed to meet students’ need for relatedness and, hence,
could have achieved feelings of choice and autonomy for her/his students
during this specific lesson. We observed autonomy-supportive teaching
strategies only occasionally during the observed lessons, resulting in very
low to low mean scores ranging from 0.29 to 1.17. SDT stresses that learning
environments that hinder feelings of autonomy of the students can produce
low levels of self-determination and, therefore, influence students’ intrin-
sic learning motivation in a negative way. Therefore, these teachers seldom
showed characteristics of teachers to fully meet students’ need for auton-
omy.
Our observations of differential teaching strategies, the third scale, re-
vealed very huge differences between the six teachers, with a mean score
of 1.80 for teacher B and a mean score of 0.00 for teacher A. The teaching
strategies of scale three pointed toward teachers who take into account dif-
ferences between students regarding students’ level, time for learning and
planning. With these specific differential teaching strategies, teachers of-
fer students some choice, support them during their assignments, and also
show involvement with their students by being orientated towards individ-
ual students. Hence, teacher B (with an observed score of 1.80 on the third
scale, and scores of 1.35 and 0.92 on the first and second scale) could be con-
sidered as the teacher of our sample who best met the basic psychological
needs of her students, and differentiated according to those needs during
this specific lesson. With the observed mean scores of 1.74 and 1.17 on global
teaching strategies and autonomy-supportive teaching strategies, respec-
tively, teacher A sometimes demonstrated a combination of teaching strate-
gies, which could be considered supportive for students’ basic needs for
competence and autonomy, but the absence of differential teaching strate-
gies is undoubtedly worrisome.
Teachers’ Perception of Their Own Instructional Behaviour and Effects
on Students’ Motivation
We were interested whether teachers acknowledged the importance of mo-
tivational teaching strategies on gifted students’ basic need satisfaction, mo-
tivation and task engagement in learning in school, and, whether teachers –
when they looked at their own behaviour on the video fragments of the les-
son observed – recognized the influence of their own behaviour on students’
87
gies. Regarding students’ basic need satisfaction, each individual teacher,
therefore, seemed to meet students’ need for competence to a reasonable
extent. Taking into account the different teaching strategies within this scale,
each teacher also seemed to meet students’ need for relatedness and, hence,
could have achieved feelings of choice and autonomy for her/his students
during this specific lesson. We observed autonomy-supportive teaching
strategies only occasionally during the observed lessons, resulting in very
low to low mean scores ranging from 0.29 to 1.17. SDT stresses that learning
environments that hinder feelings of autonomy of the students can produce
low levels of self-determination and, therefore, influence students’ intrin-
sic learning motivation in a negative way. Therefore, these teachers seldom
showed characteristics of teachers to fully meet students’ need for auton-
omy.
Our observations of differential teaching strategies, the third scale, re-
vealed very huge differences between the six teachers, with a mean score
of 1.80 for teacher B and a mean score of 0.00 for teacher A. The teaching
strategies of scale three pointed toward teachers who take into account dif-
ferences between students regarding students’ level, time for learning and
planning. With these specific differential teaching strategies, teachers of-
fer students some choice, support them during their assignments, and also
show involvement with their students by being orientated towards individ-
ual students. Hence, teacher B (with an observed score of 1.80 on the third
scale, and scores of 1.35 and 0.92 on the first and second scale) could be con-
sidered as the teacher of our sample who best met the basic psychological
needs of her students, and differentiated according to those needs during
this specific lesson. With the observed mean scores of 1.74 and 1.17 on global
teaching strategies and autonomy-supportive teaching strategies, respec-
tively, teacher A sometimes demonstrated a combination of teaching strate-
gies, which could be considered supportive for students’ basic needs for
competence and autonomy, but the absence of differential teaching strate-
gies is undoubtedly worrisome.
Teachers’ Perception of Their Own Instructional Behaviour and Effects
on Students’ Motivation
We were interested whether teachers acknowledged the importance of mo-
tivational teaching strategies on gifted students’ basic need satisfaction, mo-
tivation and task engagement in learning in school, and, whether teachers –
when they looked at their own behaviour on the video fragments of the les-
son observed – recognized the influence of their own behaviour on students’
87
