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This study looked at the influence of a Sport Education intervention program on students’ motivational responses in a high school physical education setting. Two intact groups were assigned curricular interventions: the Sport Education group (n = 25), which received eight 60-min lessons, and the comparison group (n = 26), which received a traditional teaching approach to sport-based activity. Pre- and postintervention measures of student enjoyment, perceived effort, perceived competence, goal orientations, perceived motivational climate, and perceived autonomy were obtained for both groups. Repeated-measures ANOVAs showed significant increases in student enjoyment and perceived effort in the Sport Education group only. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that increases in task-involving climate and perceived autonomy explained a significant amount of unique variance in the Sport Education students’ postintervention enjoyment, perceived effort, and perceived competence responses. The results suggest that the Sport Education curriculum may increase perceptions of a task-involving climate and perceived autonomy, and in so doing, enhance the motivation of high school students toward physical education.

One of the primary goals of physical education is for students to gain the motivation to continue to be physically active outside of curriculum time. The purpose of this study was to use a case study approach to examine elementary students’ responses to Sport Education and how it influenced their choice to participate in the same sports during lunch recess. The Trans-Contextual Model of motivation (TCM) was used as a deductive lens to qualitatively examine this synergy. Findings revealed that Sport Education was effective in satisfying the students’ basic psychological needs in physical education and specifically promoting male students’ participation in the lunch recess context. Sport Education has the potential to promote trans-contextual participation if students’ autonomy support is also facilitated within the extra-curricular sport context.