ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1527510
The Relationship Between Autonomy, Relatedness, and Students’ Transformative Experience: A Cross-Cultural Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait
- 2University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado, United States
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Transformative experience is a deep-engagement outcome that involves using curricular content to see and experience the world in meaningful new ways in one's everyday life.Researcher have investigated individual factors predictive of transformative experience. We built on this research by investigating perceived autonomy and relatedness support as potential predictors of transformative experience and considering cross-cultural effects. Pre-service teachers from both the United States and Kuwait comprised the sample (n = 353). Perceived autonomy and relatedness support, the interaction between perceived autonomy and relatedness support, and the three-way interaction between perceived autonomy support, perceived relatedness support, and nationality were significant predictors of transformative experience controlling for students' year in school and gender. Moderation analyses revealed that a baseline level of perceived relatedness support was needed for the relationship between perceived autonomy support and transformative experience to manifest and this baseline was higher for Kuwaiti students. Further, for U.S. but not Kuwaiti students, a baseline level of perceived autonomy support was needed for the relationship between perceived relatedness support and transformative experience to manifest. Overall, perceived autonomy and relatedness support were important predictors of transformative experience for both nationalities, but perceived autonomy support was relatively more important for U.S. students and perceived relatedness support for Kuwaiti students.
Keywords: Transformative experience, autonomy, Relatedness, self-determination theory, Pre-servce teachers
Received: 13 Nov 2024; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alardhi and Pugh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yousef Alardhi, Kuwait University, Kuwait City, Kuwait
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