A cultural insight into the development of teacher autonomy support scale

Abstract

Purpose The cross-cultural significance of autonomy within self-determination theory is divisive on universal significance. This paper aims to report a sequential exploratory mixed methods study conducted to construct and validate a scale to investigate how, in Malaysian context, the construct of autonomy is conceptualized in comparison with the existing scale owing to cultural variation. Design/methodology/approach Focus group interviews identified dimensions of autonomy support that were specific to Malaysian culture and guided the development of the survey and construct validation was done using structure equation modeling. Findings The results show that the proposed scale has satisfactory psychometric properties, and the hypothesized model had a good fit to the data. The new scale produced four dimensions of teacher autonomy support, namely, responsible, approachable, shows respect and conveys confidence, with three items in each dimension. Malaysian secondary school students’ perception of autonomy support was found to be distinctive from the traditional measure. Originality/value Implications for teachers are discussed for culturally meaningful interpretation of the autonomy construct for classroom teaching practices.