Teachers College Record Volume 113, Number 5, May 2011, pp. 969–1003 Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University 0161-4681 How Do Teachers Support Students’ Motivation and Learning in Their Classrooms? LYNLEY ANDERMAN The Ohio State University CAREY E. ANDRZEJEWSKI Auburn University JENNIFER ALLEN University of Kentucky Background/Context: Despite the importance of students’ active engagement for learning, little is known about how teachers create environments that are supportive of students’ pos- itive motivational and learning-related beliefs. Furthermore, most of the studies that have described teacher practices in relation to students’ perceptions of their classroom context have focused on elementary and middle school populations; much less is known about creating supportive contexts for high school students. We conceptualized supportive instructional contexts as multidimensional, developing a profile of student perceptions that would define a classroom that would promote and sustain students’ motivation and learning, based on the literature on classroom motivation. This profile included perceptions of the motivational climate, the social climate, and the academic climate of the classroom. Purpose and Research Questions: The goal of this study was to identify high school teach- ers who were perceived by their students as creating classroom contexts that were particularly supportive of students’ motivation and learning, and to describe their practice. The analy- sis was guided by these questions: How do effective high school teachers create classroom con- texts that students perceive as supportive of their motivation and engagement? What