Teachers’ Conditional Regard and Students’ Need Satisfaction and Agentic Engagement: A Multilevel Motivation Mediation Model

Teachers’ conditional positive regard and conditional negative regard are common motivational techniques in the classroom. This study investigated their respective effects on adolescent students’ agentic engagement, while considering students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy and relatedness as potential mediators. Data collected from 30 teachers and 651 7th to 10th graders (52% female) were used to test a multilevel mediation model. The results indicated that teachers’ conditional negative regard undermined students’ agentic engagement by frustrating both of their autonomy and relatedness needs. Teachers’ conditional positive regard thwarted students’ sense of autonomy, which consequently undermined their agentic engagement. The findings are discussed in terms of conditional positive and negative regard as undesirable classroom motivational practices and the mechanisms through which they operate. The discussion also notes the importance of investigating contextual factors at the classroom level.