Should the teacher leave the kids alone? the drawbacks of autonomy supportive teaching on learning

Since organizations and educational institutions rely more and more frequently on autonomy supportive learning contexts, there is a growing interest to understand how autonomy supportive teaching styles influence individual learning. In this study, we investigate and test a model on the effect on individual learning of an autonomy supportive teaching style and its interplay with learner previous experience and perceived organizational support. Especially, while research has emphasized the positive effect of an autonomy supportive context, this study focuses also on its drawbacks and on how job experience and organizational support can mitigate these negative effects on individual learning. We test our model by collecting longitudinal data on a sample of 200 individuals participating in a training program on managerial skills. Our results show that: 1) the extent to which teachers were perceived autonomy supportive presents an inverted U-shape relation with individual learning 2) learner job experience and perceived organizational support to learning have a positive moderating effect on the curvilinear relationship between autonomy supportive teaching and individual learning