Effects of a Sport Education Intervention on Students’ Motivational Responses in Physical Education



A Sport Education Intervention

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The Sport Education curriculum model effectively brought about positive
changes in students’ perceptions of a sport-based physical education program. The
increases in several motivational indices are consistent with the findings of
Alexander, Taggart, and Medland (1993), who reported increases in enthusiasm
and enjoyment among boys in a Sport Education class. The findings also lend
support to previous research on teacher anecdotal perceptions of the positive ef-
fect of Sport Education on student motivation in physical education (Alexander &
Luckman, 2001; Grant, 1992). Furthermore, Alexander, Taggart, and Thorpe (1996)
analyzed student perceptions of the Sport Education model and concluded that the
students prefer the model because they learn more and are more involved in the
lessons compared to traditional physical education curricula.

In a more recent study, which evaluated teachers’ perceptions of the Sport
Education model, Alexander and Luckman (2001) suggested that students enjoy
the model because the emphasis is not only on learning sport skills but also on
learning personal and social skills. Previous research has shown that a shift in
emphasis from just learning sport skills to working in cooperative groups is con-
ducive to fostering student enjoyment (Hastie, 1996).

Alexander and Luckman (2001) claimed that the pedagogy of a model which
offers an extended season, persisting groups, less direct teaching, and more re-
sponsibility for students can create meaning, purpose, and enjoyment for students
in physical education. Hastie (1998) has suggested that the extended season and
persisting grouping of the Sport Education curriculum can increase student skill
and tactical development. Although we did not assess changes in student skill com-
petence in basketball as part of this study, the lack of significant improvement in
the Sport Education students’ perceived competence might be due to the relatively
short duration (eight 1-hr lessons) of the intervention and fewer opportunities for
students to practice skills. Research by Alexander and Luckman (2001) has pro-
posed that many teachers who utilize the Sport Education model do so primarily as
a vehicle to promote student prosocial development, values, and attitudes.

Although a primary goal of Sport Education is to develop “competent per-
formers” (Siedentop, 1994, p. 4), a teacher’s implementation of the model which
overemphasizes student affective outcomes, and the accountability systems that
accompany these goals, may indirectly affect the model’s potential for developing
student skill and tactical performance. Further research is required to examine the
potential effect—not only of the duration of the season but also the implementing
teacher’s curricular goals—on student skill development and perceptions of com-
petence in the Sport Education unit.

This study proposed that the structure of the Sport Education curriculum has
many commonalties with Epstein’s (1989) TARGET structures for fostering a task-
involved climate. Such a climate has been associated with more adaptive student
cognitive and affective motivational patterns in physical education (Mitchell, 1996;
Papaioannou, 1995). To test this claim, the present study assessed whether changes
in students’ perceptions of a task-involving climate, perceived autonomy, and task
goal orientation would significantly predict student postintervention enjoyment,
perceived effort, and perceived competence in the Sport Education curriculum.
The results of the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that postintervention
task goal orientation explained a significant amount of variance in students’ re-
ported postintervention perceived effort and competence. Furthermore, students’
perception of postintervention task-involving climate significantly predicted en-



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