Psychology in the Schools

Goal of the study

​•To see if meeting students' psychological needs in keeping with self​-determination theory would meditate the association between teacher-student relationships and happiness.

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•Look for correlation between grade and psychological need satisfaction.

•They examined American students with subsamples of

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​•​African American

•Asian

•Latinx

​•Self-determination theory says that there must be a satisfaction of the three psychological needs for students to thrive

​• Studies indicate that teachers who support positive teacher-student relationship promote autonomous motivation.

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• It is still not well understood why teacher and student relationships are associated with student happiness

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• It was reported that as students advance, they perceive that their needs for autonomy are met to a lesser degree by both teachers and parents.​

​• There is not a lot of studies that indicate how teacher-student relationship affect minority groups.​

• It has been reported that

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​• Autonomous motivation is related to happiness 

​•European American students report higher levels of happiness than minority groups

•African American students report lower level of happiness than all the other groups

Results

​• In the main sample, and all subsamples it was discovered that

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• Meeting psychological needs through positive teacher-student relationships ia a promising path toward happiness and to intrinsic motivation.​

• Only the Latinx community showed a strongly negative correlation between grade and psychological need satisfaction.

​• The effect of psychological need satisfaction on happiness was lower for African American students than for the whole sample

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​​ • teacher-student relationships were moderately to strongly positively correlated associated with

psychological need satisfaction

​ • Psychological need satisfaction is positive correlated with happiness

What can we do now?

Teachers should:

​​• Develop supportive and positive relationship with their students.

​​• Communicate with students in an autonomy-relatedness supportive style.

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