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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to define student learning capacity and to examine the role of the school principal in nurturing it. Method: The study used cross-sectional data from 3,175 students in 70 schools located in a metropolitan area of a Southwestern city. We tested three hypotheses by following a conventional modeling building process in HLM 7.0: Hypothesis 1--Principal Support for Student Psychological Needs (PSSPN) is related to school differences in student-perceived autonomysupport; Hypothesis 2--PSSPN is related to school differences in studentperceived competence-support; Hypothesis 3--Student-perceived needsupport mediates the relationship between PSSPN and grit. Results: Evidence aligns with our initial theorizing about student learning capacity and principal support for student psychological needs. Student-perceived need-support, as a social characteristic of capacity, manifests itself through teacher-student interactions in the learning process. Need-supporting interactions varied significantly across schools, and principals played a critical role in developing an instructional environment that students experienced as nurturing autonomy and competence. Implications: PSSPN highlights the transformative effects that regular principal-teacher social exchanges can have on instructional practices. School principals who interacted with teachers about student psychological needs and need-supporting instructional practices contributed to a learning environment that students experienced as autonomy-supporting and competence-supporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: Schools have differential effects on student learning and development, but research has not generated much explanatory evidence of the social-psychological pathway to better achievement outcomes. Explanatory evidence of how normative conditions enable students to thrive is particularly relevant in the urban context where attention disproportionately centers on the pathology of these environments rather than social attributes that contribute to student growth. Research Purpose: Our purpose in this study was to determine if a self-regulatory climate works through student self-regulation to influence academic achievement. We hypothesized that (1) self-regulatory climate explains school-level differences in self-regulated learning, and (2) self-regulated learning mediates the relationship between self-regulatory climate and math achievement. Research Design: We used expost facto survey data from students and teachers in 80 elementary and secondary schools from a large, southwestern urban school district. A multilevel modeling building process in HLM 7.0 was used to test our hypotheses. Results: Both hypotheses were supported. Self-regulatory climate explained significant schoollevel variance in self-regulated learning. Additionally, student self-regulated learning mediated the relationship between self-regulatory climate and math achievement. Conclusions: Our results suggest that schools, like teachers, have differential effects on the motivational resources of students, with self-regulatory climate being an essential social condition for self-regulation and achievement. We believe self-regulatory climate has value for educators seeking to provide equitable learning opportunities for all students and for researchers seeking to account for achievement differences attributed to schools. In both cases, selfregulatory climate advances a construct and measure that conceptualizes and operationalizes school-level support for psychological needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]