Provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-prints Repository
JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 2004, 23, 4-18
© 2004 HUMAN KINETICS PUBLISHERS, INC.
Effects of a Sport Education Intervention on Students’
Motivational Responses in Physical Education
Tristan L. Wallhead Nikos Ntoumanis
The Ohio State University The University of Birmingham
This study looked at the influence of a Sport Education intervention program
on students’ motivational responses in a high school physical education set-
ting. Two intact groups were assigned curricular interventions: the Sport Edu-
cation group (n = 25), which received eight 60-min lessons, and the compari-
son group (n = 26), which received a traditional teaching approach to sport-
based activity. Pre- and postintervention measures of student enjoyment, per-
ceived 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 au-
tonomy explained a significant amount of unique variance in the Sport Educa-
tion students’ postintervention enjoyment, perceived effort, and perceived
competence responses. The results suggest that the Sport Education curricu-
lum may increase perceptions of a task-involving climate and perceived au-
tonomy, and in so doing, enhance the motivation of high school students to-
ward physical education.
Key Words: curriculum programs, motivational climate, high school students
Motivation has been viewed as a key factor influencing student learning
outcomes (Chen, 2001). From a cognitive perspective, Pintrich and Schunk (1996)
have defined motivation as the process in which a goal-directed activity is insti-
gated and sustained. In the educational domain, research on motivation is mainly
concerned with how personal and environmental factors involved in the teaching/
learning process energize and direct student learning and achievement (Chen, 2001).
Whether students are motivated to persist in the learning behavior or not is highly
dependent on their specific goals and cognitions, and on whether they perceive
their experience as positive or not. A type of individual motivation that has been
shown to be important in determining positive motivated behavior in physical edu-
cation and sport is the students’ level of intrinsic motivation (Mitchell, 1996). This
Tristan L. Wallhead is with The Ohio State University, Dept. of Sport and Exercise
Education, 215 Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210-1221; Nikos
Ntoumanis is with the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birming-
ham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, England.