Antecedents of PE teachers’ motivational style: a systematic review of key findings and future directions in physical education research

Physical Education (PE) has been highlighted as one appropriate venue to promote a healthy active lifestyle among young people and to contribute to the achievement of important learning goals (Cheon, Reeve, & Ntoumanis, 2018; Kerr et al., 2018). It explains the existence of a relevant line of research which has drawn attention to the analysis of this setting.

Motivation has emerged as an important factor in the explanation of several learning, psychological and social outcomes in the PE context. Over the last few years, a great deal of investigations has focused on student outcomes. It has been suggested though that future research can be of extra value if more insight is gained into antecedents of teachers’ behaviours.

This session is aimed to shed some light on this topic by presenting three complementary proposals. Along the session, different research will be presented in which a) PE teachers are inquired about their perceptions of barriers and facilitators for their practice through a qualitative approach and b) relationships between teacher and student motivation are analysed through multilevel modelling. The session will conclude with c) a reflection on the three contributions and seek to provide a theoretical, empirical and applied analysis to inform future research and practice in this context.

The session could be of interest to a broad audience including physical education teachers, sport psychologists and researchers.