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This study examined the relationship among goal orientations, perceived motivation climate, self-reported discipline, reasons for discipline, and perceived teacher’s strategies to sustain discipline in physical education lessons. Six hundred and seventy-four students responded on questionnaires assessing the aforementioned variables. Task orientation was positively associated with self-determined reasons for discipline. The perception of a task-involving climate was positively related to perceptions of teaching strategies promoting reasons for discipline determined by the students. Task-involvement and self-determined reasons for being disciplined corresponded to students’ reported discipline in the lesson. On the contrary, the perception of an ego-involving climate was linked with perceived teaching strategies promoting an external locus of causality in the lesson. The results imply that teachers who try to strengthen the task orientation of students and help them adopt more self-determined reasons for being disciplined will have more orderly classes.

This study examined how perceived motivational climate in physical education is related to (a) perceptions of teachers’ differential treatment toward high and low achievers, (b) reported motivation and anxiety of children with high and low perceived competence during play or exercise with high- or low-ability children. One thousand three hundred ninety-three high school students completed measures of the above variables. The perception of teacher’s differential treatment was positively related to the perception of an environment emphasizing social comparison and negatively related to the perception of a climate emphasizing personal progress. Perceived competence had no effect on intrinsic motivation when extremely high learning goals were adopted. When low learning goals were adopted, motivation decreased for children with low perceived ability playing with high achievers and for children with high perceived ability playing with low achievers. A high learning-oriented climate should be created to enhance equality and maximize motivation.

Based on recent trends in positive psychology, on ancient Greek sport literature and particularly on Aristotle’s philosophy, the holistic, harmonious and internal motivational components of excellence and their implications for students’ motivation for physical activity, health and well-being are presented. While modern motivational theories and research have partly addressed the holistic and internal motivational components of excellence, they have yet to address its harmonious part. In this article it is explained why all three components of excellence are required to promote eudaimonic well-being, which is the ultimate aim of Olympism. It is argued also that the conceptualization of hedonic-eudaimonic well-being should be primarily based on the “me” versus “us” meaning. While current physical activity experiences more often reflect a hedonistic perspective, to promote health and well-being for all, an eudaimonic perspective in teaching in physical education and youth sport is needed. This should primarily focus on the promotion of Olympic ideals, such as excellence, friendship, and respect. These three ideals and well-being are all very much interconnected, when all three components of excellence exist in excess. To promote excellence, Olympic ideals, and well-being, the core ideas of an educational philosophy promoting excellence in physical education and youth sport are presented.

Purpose: This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effects on students’ autonomous motivation and satisfaction from a program integrating physics concepts in physical education. Method: A total of 487 students (age 13 ± 1) participated in the study. The participants were students participating in physical education classes divided into intervention (n = 183), comparison, and control condition (n = 150 and n = 154, respectively). Before the intervention and three times during its implementation, the students responded on measures of situational motivation with good construct validity. Results: The intervention increased the students’ autonomous motivation and satisfaction in physical education and decreased the students’ amotivation. Conclusion: An effective integration of physics concepts and physical activities can promote meaningful learning, a holistic education perspective, autonomous motivation, and wellness in physical education.

The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of student-activated teaching styles through a specific intervention program on students’ self-regulation, lesson satisfaction, and motivation. Six hundred and one 7th grade students (318 boys and 283 girls), aged 13 years were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a comparison group. The teachers who taught the students assigned to the experimental group used student-activated teaching styles, and specifically the reciprocal, self-check, inclusion, guided discovery, convergent discovery, and divergent discovery styles. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that the experimental group, compared with the comparison group, had higher scores in lesson satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, and metacognitive activities, and lower scores in external motivation, and amotivation. The study revealed that going beyond the command and/or the practice style of teaching, PE teachers can enhance students’ metacognitive skills, lesson satisfaction and intrinsic motivation.

The aim of the present investigation was to develop an instrument assessing the content and the structure of athletes’ self-talk. The study was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, a large pool of items was generated and content analysis was used to organize the items into categories. Furthermore, item-content relevance analysis was conducted to help identifying the most appropriate items. In Stage 2, the factor structure of the instrument was examined by a series of exploratory factor analyses (Sample A: N = 507), whereas in Stage 3 the results of the exploratory factor analysis were retested through confirmatory factor analyses (Sample B: N = 766) and at the same time concurrent validity were assessed. The analyses revealed eight factors, four positive (psych up, confidence, anxiety control and instruction), three negative (worry, disengagement and somatic fatigue) and one neutral (irrelevant thoughts). The findings of the study provide evidence regarding the multidimensionality of self-talk, suggesting that ASTQS seems a psychometrically sound instrument that could help us developing cognitive-behavioral theories and interventions to examine and modify athletes’ self-talk.

Purpose: This study aimed to test the invariance of perceptions of the Spectrum teaching styles across Turkish and Greek preservice physical education teachers and to examine whether the styles could be classified into two clusters through self-determination theory. Greek (n = 298) and Turkish (n = 300) preservice teachers participated. Method: Cothran, Kulinna, and Ward’s questionnaire based on teachers’ use of and beliefs about teaching styles was used to examine their perceptions of the styles. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis revealed 11 factor indices and parameter estimates, suggesting that the 11-factor model fit the data. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis established metric measurement invariance across samples. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis showed that, for all higher-order models, the minimum requirement for invariance factor loading was met. The model comparison revealed that the styles could be categorized into four clusters from less to more autonomy-oriented. Conclusion: These findings might be useful to practitioners who want to use teaching styles in the promotion of students’ motivation in physical education.

Motivational climate is inherently a group-level construct so that longitudinal, multilevel designs are needed to evaluate its effects on subsequent outcomes. Based on a large sample of physical education classes (2,786 students, 200 classes, 67 teachers), we evaluated the effects of classroom motivational climate (task-involving and ego-involving) and individual goal orientations (task and ego) on individual students’ outcomes (intrinsic motivation, attitudes, physical self-concept, and exercise intentions) collected early (T1) and late (T2) in the school year. Using a multilevel approach, we found significant class-average differences in motivational climate at T1 that had positive effects on T2 outcomes after controlling T1 outcomes. Although there was no support for a “compatibility hypothesis” (e.g., that task oriented students were more benefited by task-involving motivation climates), the stability of goal orientations was undermined by incompatible climates.

This study examined the effect of goal setting on injury rehabilitation, specifically, differences in personal goal setting, self-efficacy, self-satisfaction, and performance between injured and noninjured subjects. Two experimental groups (32 women with knee injuries and 29 noninjured women) and one control group (n = 30) were used. Subjects performed four trials of a knee extension task on an isokinetic dynamometer. Prior to the third and fourth trials, subjects in the experimental groups set personal goals and completed self-efficacy and self-satisfaction scales. There were significant performance improvements for the two experimental groups; correlation coefficients between self-efficacy, self-satisfaction, goal setting, and performance were significant at the .001 level Personal goal setting was affected by level of ability and in turn had a direct effect on performance. Self-efficacy and self-satisfaction were affected by ability or performance but had no significant effect on personal goals or performance. The findings indicate that personal goal setting might be an important determinant for performance improvement in injury rehabilitation programs.

A new instrument of motivational climate in physical education is presented with the goal of measuring perceptions of teachers’ emphasis on mastery, performance–approach, performance–avoidance, and social approval goals. The measure was based on the principle of compatibility, according to which climate perceptions and achievement goals should be compatible between each other in terms of target, action domain, life context, and time. The measure was administered to 928 middle school students alongside scales of intrinsic motivation, amotivation, and satisfaction. The statistical analyses included structural equation modeling, investigation of factor correlations, correlation of this measure with intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, and amotivation in physical education and investigation of intraclass correlations. The findings provide evidence of construct validity for the new measure and suggest that mastery and social approval goals can facilitate intrinsic motivation of students.