A Sport Education Intervention
answered on 5-point scale ranging from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 = “strongly
agree.” The scores for task and ego goal orientation were calculated as the mean of
the responses to each item of the two subscales. Past research with English sec-
ondary school students in physical education classes has demonstrated that the
instrument is valid and reliable (Duda, Fox, Biddle, & Armstrong, 1992).
Perceived Autonomy. Student perceived autonomy was assessed using a
20-item questionnaire adapted to physical education by Goudas, Biddle, and Fox
(1994). The items were taken from the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire
(ASRQ; Ryan & Connell, 1989) and the Academic Motivation Scale (Vallerand,
Pelletier, Blais, et al., 1992). The questionnaire consists of five subscales repre-
senting different degrees of autonomy. Ryan and Connell (1989) have shown that,
using some simple mathematical computations, one can obtain an index of self-
determination—the Relative Autonomy Index (RAI)—from these subscales. The
RAI represents a continuum of perceived autonomy, with positive scores indicat-
ing higher levels of perceived autonomy. Goudas et al. (1994) demonstrated that
all five subscales in the instrument had acceptable reliability and validity when
used with adolescent physical education students.
Perceptions of Motivational Climate. Students’ perceptions of the task-
and ego-involving motivational climate were assessed with the Learning and Per-
formance Orientations in Physical Education Classes Questionnaire (LAPOPECQ;
Papaioannou, 1995). Evidence for the validity of the LAPOPECQ to assess moti-
vational climate in physical education has been established based on a sample of
nearly 1,400 Greek high school students (Papaioannou, 1995). The LAPOPECQ
consists of five factors. Two factors represent a task-involving climate and include
6 items that tap student perception of teachers’ behaviors and 5 items that measure
students’ satisfaction with learning. There are 17 additional items measuring three
aspects of an ego-involving climate: students’ worries about mistakes, performing
better than others, and superior performance without effort. Students responded to
each statement on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 = “strongly disagree” to 5 =
strongly agree. Mean scores for task-involving and ego-involving climate were
calculated using the mean scores of their corresponding items.
Teacher Behavior. Differences in student motivation between the two cur-
ricular approaches could be the result of differing amounts or types of support
offered by the teacher to the students during lessons. To examine whether the
teacher’s verbal interaction with the students differed between the two groups, we
videotaped a single lesson from each curricular program and transcribed the
teacher’s verbal behavior. The observations were videotaped during the lesson
prior to the issue of the postintervention questionnaires. Teacher verbal behavior
was coded using an adapted form of the Coach Behavior Assessment System
(CBAS; Smith & Smoll, 1990).
The adapted form examined 12 categories of teacher behavior organized
into two major dimensions: (a) general teacher-initiated behavior, and (b) teacher
behavior in response to students’ performance. The first dimension of teacher-
initiated behavior involves technical instruction, organization, general communi-
cation, and general encouragement. The second dimension of reactive teacher
behaviors involves reinforcement and non-reinforcement responses to desirable
performance, and reactions to mistakes including encouragement, technical in-
struction, punishment, and lack of response. Previous research (Goudas, Biddle,