The present study was conducted in view of the lack of sufficient evidence regarding the importance of autonomy support and suppression for students in collectivist-hierarchical cultures. The study examined the effects of students' perceptions of autonomy support and suppression by teachers on students' optimal learning experience: autonomous motivation, a-motivation, exploratory motivation, future orientation, grades and engagement in learning, while controlling for students' sense of competence and students' grades at the end of the year preceding the study. We also controlled for various background variables: age, gender and subject of study. Results from 323 Bedouin-Israeli students in 7^th-11^th grade indicated that autonomy support has unique positive effects on students' engagement, autonomous motivation, exploratory motivation and future orientation, while autonomy suppression has unique negative effects on the younger students' grades and unique positive effects on a-motivation. The role of autonomous motivation and a-motivation as mediators of the effects of autonomy support and suppression on students' outcomes were examined and confirmed. In general the results demonstrate that in comparison to boys the learning experience of Bedouin girls is much more optimal. The results suggest that autonomy is also important for students belonging to hierarchical-collectivist societies. The results are discussed in terms of Bedouin adolescents' development in school, while stressing cultural effects. We also discuss the issue of females' status in Bedouin society and their striving for autonomy within the boundaries of their inferior status in the Bedouin community in a time of change.

Self-determination theory is unique in its strong emphasis on autonomy as a universal basic psychological need (SDT, Deci and Ryan, 2000, 2008). Research conducted primarily in North America, tends to support the conclusion that students benefit from autonomy support and suffer from controllingness (Reeve, Deci, & Ryan, 2004).

Past research (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000; Assor, Kaplan & Roth, 2002) has shown that when students feel that teachers support their autonomy they value the learning task, feel interested, and show considerable engagement in it. Recent research (Kaplan et al., 2008) has shown that autonomy-supporting and suppressing teacher-behaviors predicted students' grades and motivation above and beyond the effects of the needs for competence and relatedness, and above and beyond the effects of student's initial motivation in the beginning of the school year. Those findings were obtained across various SES groups, different age groups and gender in Israel's western population.

However, some cross-cultural researchers have argued that autonomy is largely a Western concept and that autonomy support and suppression might not have an important effect on motivation for students belonging to cultures with strong collectivist-hierarchical orientations (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 2003).

 In contrast to such perspectives, SDT maintains that autonomy support and suppression have similar effects across widely diverse cultures (Deci & Ryan, 2008). SDT researchers do agree, however, that the ways in which autonomy is experienced do differ as a function of cultural differences (Vansteenkiste et al., 2005).

In view of the lack of sufficient evidence regarding the importance of autonomy support and suppression for students in collectivist cultures, and following the study conducted with a Western population in Israel, the present study examines the effects of autonomy support and suppression on Bedouin students' optimal learning experience.

Sample and Procedure:

The participants were 323 Bedouin students belonging to a collectivist- hierarchical society, in the 7^th-9^th grades (170 students) and the 10^th-11^th grades (153 students), 56% girls and 44% boys, mostly from low SES families

Each student completed scales assessing the extent to which his/her teacher in Arabic or Math supported or suppressed autonomy, and scales assessing students' optimal learning experience: autonomous motivation, a-motivation, exploratory motivation and future orientation. Students' grades at the end of the year were obtained, and teachers reported on students' engagement.. In order to examine the unique effects of autonomy support and suppression we also obtained students' grades at the end of the year preceding the study and students completed a questionnaire assessing  sense of competence. The data was collected at three time-points. The scales were based on prior research (Assor et al., 2002). Reliability coefficients were sufficient.

Results: Correlational and regression analyses revealed that autonomy support has unique positive effects on students' engagement, autonomous motivation, exploratory motivation and future orientation. Autonomy suppression has unique negative effects on students' grades in the 7^th-9^th grades and unique positive effects on a-motivation. These results were obtained above and beyond students' sense of competence and students' grades in the previous year and in most cases also above and beyond age, gender and subject of study. In general the results demonstrate that in comparison to boys the learning experience of Bedouin girls is much more optimal. The role of autonomous motivation and a-motivation as mediators of the effects of autonomy support and suppression on students' outcomes were examined and confirmed according to Kenny, Kashy & Bolger’s (1998) procedures, while controlling for the effects of the background variables.

Conclusion: The results suggest that autonomy is also important for students belonging to hierarchical-collectivist societies. The findings are particularly interesting because they suggest that in comparison to boys the learning experience of girls is much more optimal and that autonomy support in Bedouin society is important to females as much as it is to males. The results are discussed in terms of Bedouin adolescents' development in school and especially females' striving for autonomy within the boundaries of their inferior status in their community in a time of change.

References

Assor, A., Kaplan, H., & Roth, G. (2002). Choice is good but relevance is excellent: Autonomy affecting teacher behaviors that predict students' engagement in learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 261-278.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Favoriser la motivation optimale et la santé mentale dans les divers milieux de vie. Canadian Psychology, 49, 14-23.

Kaplan, H. Assor, A., & Roth, G. & Kannt-Maymon, Y. (2008). Autonomy-supportive teaching and students‘functioning: Is Autonomy important for low SES Jewish & Bedouin adolescent? Paper presented at AERA, New York. 

Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., Bolger, N. (1998) Data analysis in social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (eds.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 252-259). McGraw-Hill.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (2003).  Models of agency: Sociocultural diversity in the construction of action.  In V. Murphy-Berman & J. J. Berman (Eds.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Cross-cultural differences in perspectives on the self (Vol. 49, pp. 1-57).  University of Nebraska Press.

Reeve, J., Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2004).  Self-determination theory:

A dialectical framework for understanding the sociocultural influences on student motivation.  In D. McInerney & S. Van Etten (Eds.), Research on sociocultural influences on motivation and learning: Big theories revisited (Vol. 4., pp. 31-59).  Information Age-Press.

            Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002).  An overview of self-determination theory:

An organismic-dialectical perspective.  In E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3-33).  University of Rochester Press.

Vansteenkiste, M., Zhou, M., Lens, W., & Soenens, B. (2005). Experiences of autonomy and control among Chinese learners: Vitalizing or immobilizing? Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 755-764.