The current context of education, with an emphasis on high stakes testing and curricular mandates, is affecting motivation in schools (Au, 2007; Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000; Ryan & Brown, 2004; Supovitz, 2009). It is important to study the relations between teaching in such contexts and teacher and student motivation. The purpose of this study is to explore predictors of teachers' use of various motivation-related instructional practices. These predictors include (a) perceptions of principal autonomy support for teachers, (b) perceptions of school achievement goal structures, and (c) teacher motivation. The research design for this study is descriptive, correlational survey to explore and describe the relations between teacher perceptions of school goal structures, principal support, goal orientations for teaching, and instructional practices. An instrument was administered that measured perceptions of teachers from seventy-five elementary schools in a large urban district, through an electronic medium. Correlations, multiple linear regression, and HLM were used to analyze the multivariate relations. HLM is an effective way to examine relations within nested designs (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). In the present study, the fact that teachers are nested within schools is an important consideration. The teacher-level variables of self-reported instructional practices, goal orientations for teaching, teachers' perceptions of school goal structure, and teachers' perceptions of principal autonomy support were averaged for each school to obtain aggregated measures. Findings generally revealed that, as predicted, a teacher's goal orientations for teaching and their perceptions of school goal structure were strongly related to their instructional practices in the classroom (Butler & Shibaz, 2008). Results suggest that mastery goals for teaching positively influence the use of instructional practices that support individual student growth. In contrast, a school goal structure that is perceived as placing a high emphasis on student performance is related to an increase in the use of controlling practices in the classroom. Controlling practices are detrimental to student motivation and learning, yet their use is widespread in schools (Flink, Boggiano & Barrett, 1990; Pelletier, Seguin-Levesque & Legault, 2002; Deci, Spiegel, Ryan, Koestner & Kauffman, 1982). This is an area of research needed in the future. Principal autonomy support was not significantly related to mastery-focused, performance-focused, or controlling practices. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]