THE SOCIAL CONTEXT AS 3
The Social Context as a Determinant of Teacher Motivational Strategies in Physical
Education
An important context that may have great potential to promote youth physical activity
is the Physical Education (PE) class since, unlike competitive sport; it ostensibly strives to
encompass virtually all children (Cavill, Biddle, & Sallis, 2001). In order to promote sensible
and healthy physical activity through PE it is important to consider how motivating PE
classes are for students, as motivation has been empirically linked to important consequences
in PE, such as the intention to be physically active and leisure time physical activity behavior
(e.g., Hagger, Chatzisarantis, Culverhouse, & Biddle, 2003). Using various theoretical
frameworks, extensive discussion has occurred concerning how teachers can influence
student motivation in PE. For example, self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000)
posits that social contexts (e.g., the motivational strategies that PE teachers use) which satisfy
individuals’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness will lead to
adaptive self-determined motivation. This argument has been supported in the PE domain
(e.g., Taylor & Ntoumanis, 2007).
Using SDT as a guiding framework, the purpose of this article was to explore how PE
teachers’ perceptions of the teaching context influence their attempts to motivate students in
their PE classes. Regardless of the research evidence indicating which teaching strategies
may be adaptive; teachers may not always utilize them in their teaching (Reeve, 2002). For
example, first year elementary teachers were observed to utilize rewards as their primary
motivational strategy (Newby, 1991), despite the effectiveness of this strategy being
questioned (e.g., Deci, Ryan & Koestner, 2001). Given this information, an exploration into
why this discrepancy between empirical suggestions and actual teaching practice sometimes
occurs seems worthy.