Psychological need satisfaction and behavioral engagement reciprocally enhance each other—Unless one’s teacher is perceived to be highly controlling.

Psychological need satisfaction energizes behavioral engagement, but behavioral engagement may also create the conditions to experience psychological need satisfaction.Recognizing this possible reciprocal relation and using a self-determination theory framework, we used a within-subjects research design to assess the reciprocal effects of student need satisfaction and their behavioral engagement under three conditions: low, moderate, and high perceived teacher control.We hypothesized that early-wave need satisfaction would enhance later-wave behavioral engagement, and that early-wave behavioral engagement would similarly enhance later-wave need satisfaction (i.e., reciprocal causation).We also hypothesized that high teacher control would moderate this reciprocal relation.Participants were 2,690 Korean secondary school students (48.6% females, 70.8% middle school students) taking the physical education course who reported their class experiences over three waves during an 18-week semester.The random interceptcross-lagged panel model analysis confirmed the hypothesized reciprocal relations.A follow-up threegroup random intercept-cross-lagged panel model analysis showed that high teacher control moderated the reciprocal relation, as behavioral engagement did not enhance need satisfaction for students who perceived their teacher to be highly controlling.We conclude that need satisfaction and behavioral engagement tend to have a positive, enhancing, and reciprocal effect on each other-unless one's teacher transforms the student's need-satisfying behavioral engagement into teacher-prescribed compliance. Educational Impact and Implications StatementOur investigation suggests two educational implications.First, a student can generate their own experience of psychological need satisfaction.We found that when a student becomes more behaviorally engaged in classroom activities than usual, then that student tends to experience more psychological need satisfaction than usual.Second, the student's exposure to a highly controlling teacher can disrupt this process.Higher-than-usual behavioral engagement yields higher-than-usual need satisfactionunless the student perceives their teacher to be highly controlling.This means that high teacher control comes at a cost, so we recommend against relying on teacher control to elicit behavioral engagement.