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The literature on post-completion reviews (PCRs) either does not deal with the tying of PCRs to extrinsic rewards or provides scant theoretical reasoning or empirical analysis to back up its recommendations.

Based on research from psychology and empirical studies, the present chapter proposes that several effects of a PCR, which must be deemed rather dysfunctional, will increase when extrinsic rewards are linked to such a review. At the same time some possibly functional effects, however, are likely to remain constant. The propositions, therefore, call the usefulness of tying PCRs to rewards into question and call for further investigation.

Given the complexity of societal, technological, and economic challenges encountered by schools and teachers, one may wonder whether and how teachers can still optimally motivate their students. To adopt a motivating role in today’s ever-changing, even stormy, educational landscape, teachers need more than a checklist of motivating practices. They also need a fundamental theoretical perspective that can serve as a general source of inspiration for their everyday classroom practices across various situations and in interaction with different students. Herein, we argue that self-determination theory represents such a valuable perspective. In Part I, we discuss the satisfaction of learners’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as a source of student motivation, engagement, and resilience. We also present a recently developed circular model involving a broad variety of motivating (i.e., need-supportive) and demotivating (i.e., need-thwarting) teaching practices appealing to these three needs. In Part II, we discuss several implications of this circular model, thereby discussing the diverse pathways that lead to student need satisfaction, motivation, and engagement as well as highlighting teachers’ capacity for calibration to deal with uncertainty and change. We conclude that school principals and teachers do well to invest in both students’ and teachers’ psychological need experiences, such that they become skilled in flexibly adjusting themselves to diversity, uncertainty, and change.

Our ongoing program of research works with teachers to help them become more autonomy supportive during instruction and hence more able to promote students’ classroom motivation and engagement.

We have published five experimentally based, longitudinally designed, teacher-focused intervention studies that have tested the effectiveness and educational benefits of an autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP).

Findings show that (1) teachers can learn how to become more autonomy supportive and less controlling toward students, (2) students of the teachers who participate in ASIP report greater psychological need satisfaction and lesser need frustration, (3) these same students report and behaviorally display a wide range of important educational benefits, such as greater classroom engagement, (4) teachers benefit as much from giving autonomy support as their students do from receiving it as teachers show large postintervention gains in outcomes such as teaching efficacy and job satisfaction, and (5) these ASIP-induced benefits are long lasting as teachers use the ASIP experience as a professional developmental opportunity to upgrade the quality of their motivating style.

Our ASIP helps teachers learn how to better support their students’ autonomy during instruction. The value of this teaching skill can be seen in teachers’ and students’ enhanced classroom experience and functioning.

In this chapter, we argue that beyond the self-enhancement motive (i.e., the desire for a positive identity), other identity motives play a significant, yet underspecified role in homogeneous and diverse groups. In particular, we explore how the desire for self-verification, belonging, and distinctiveness offer alternative and, at times, even contradictory explanations for findings typically attributed to self-enhancement. We also consider the ways in which these motives are influenced in homogenous and diverse groups and the effects they have on group processes and performance. Through our examination, we aim to stimulate research on the role of multiple identity motives in homogenous and diverse groups.

This chapter explores how self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2017), an empirical theory about human motivation and personality, aligns with principles and practices of social and emotional learning (SEL) within the school context. Through its emphasis on basic psychological needs (BPN) for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, SDT proposes a broad perspective on how the social context can facilitate the development of social and emotional skills, which complements SEL programs. Research anchored in SDT has indeed established that students' academic, social, and emotional skills are determined at least partly by the extent to which their BPN are fulfilled in their learning environment. SDT also brings attention to the motivation and goals underlying the teaching and learning of social and emotional skills. Although SDT-based interventions mainly target the school or the classroom climate rather than students' skills, they can also foster the development of the five core social and emotional competencies defined by CASEL (2005). Implications and future directions for practices and research integrating SDT-based principles and interventions within SEL programs and practices are discussed.