How teacher agency adapted to child competencies and teacher communion relate to student needs fulfillment and motivation

A teacher who behaves warm and affectionate towards a child (strong communion) is more beneficial for the student's motivation than one who expresses feelings of distance or rejection (weak communion). Additionally, adaptive teaching where instructional support, guidance, and supervision are adjusted to the individual child's competencies (adaptive agency) has been proven beneficial for student learning. We modelled teacher behavior in an interpersonal circumplex which allows teacher communion and adaptive agency as well as their effects on the student to be described simultaneously. We investigated the micro-system of the child-teacher dyad and measured child competencies via standardized tests. We predicted that teacher-reported strong communion and adaptive agency fosters child-reported need fulfillment and motivation. Results on 1769 elementary school children and their 77 teachers showed that strong communion and – irrespective of child competencies - weak agency strengthened need fulfillment and motivation. We discuss implications for self-determination theory and adaptive teaching. We assumed that while all children benefit in their motivation from warm and affectionate teacher behavior (strong communion) teachers should adapt the extent to which they guide and monitor a student to the individual child's competencies (adaptive agency), with children with well-developed competencies benefiting from weaker agency and children with not yet well-developed competencies benefiting from stronger agency. Teachers reported their communal and agentic behaviors towards each child of their class, children reported their need fulfillment and motivation, and were tested in their mathematics and language competencies. Our results show that strong communion and agency that was weaker than predicted by child competencies supported need fulfillment and self-determined forms of motivation. Contrary to our expectations, teacher agency that was stronger than predicted by child competencies barely impaired child motivation. Findings suggest that strong teacher communion is vital for child motivation and that as long as a teacher does not adapt their agency precisely to a child's competencies, weak agency is more motivationally beneficial than strong agency. • We investigated teacher behavior (agency, communion) and children's need fulfillment / motivation. • Weak agency – relative to child competencies – predicted need fulfillment and motivation. • Strong teacher-reported communion predicted child need fulfillment / self-determined motivation. • Teacher behavior is beneficial when strong communion is combined with subtle agency.