Perceived motivational support in elementary school: Perceptual agreement and its associations with academic outcomes

Teacher-provided motivational support plays a critical role in students' academic outcomes. Unfortunately, elementary school students often feel that their needs are not being met. Teachers need to be aware of their students' perceptions of motivational support in order to adapt their teaching methods and increase their students' motivation and performance. To investigate the agreement between teachers' and students' perceptions of motivational support and its associations with academic outcomes, N = 49 teachers rated ten of their students' perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness support. The results showed low perceptual agreement between teachers' and students' perceptions in all areas of motivational support. The highest discrepancy was found for perceived autonomy support. Teachers statistically significantly overestimated individual students' perceptions of autonomy support. Response surface analyses revealed that higher levels of perceptual agreement were associated with greater intrinsic reading motivation and higher reading performance. These findings underscore the importance of accurately monitoring motivational support.