Students’ perceptions of teacher control behaviours

Student perceptions of the kind and extent of control in their teachers’ control behaviours during learning activities were investigated. Theorists distinguish between ‘student-initiated’ and ‘teacher-initiated’ regulation of students’ learning activities; or between ‘strong,’ ‘shared’ and ‘loose’ control of students’ activities during learning tasks. Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (LISREL) performed on perception data of 2061 secondary education students of 67 teachers support three constructs of control behaviours, at least from the students’ perspective: ‘strong,’ ‘shared’ and ‘loose’ control. However, while similar to other constructs with the same labels, the particular items in the three constructs that emerged from students differed somewhat from those proposed by other researchers.