Autonomy support as apredictor ofstudent engagement in higher education

Teacher autonomy support is defined as teacher's instructional effort to identify and strengthen students' internal motivational resources and autonomy. Furthermore, the study made use of concept of student engagement, which is a multidimensional construct that represents the interaction between the individual and the context. Students tend to show higher levels of engagement when they perceive that teachers support their autonomy. In consequence,the primary objective of this paper is to ascertain the role of perceived autonomy support as a predictor of university students' academic engagement.A probabilistic sample of 601 students from a public university in Ecuador participated in correlational-explanatory research, which entailed the completion of two questionnaires. The data analysis included hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis. The principal result shows that the greater the teachers’ support for autonomy, the higher the levels of student engagement. Therefore, is possible to conclude that autonomy support is a significant predictor of student engagement. This suggests that learning climates and strategies which foster student autonomy should be prioritised over more controlling climates and strategies.