TARGETing secondary school students’ motivation towards physical education: The role of student-perceived mastery climate teaching strategies

RESEARCH ARTICLE TARGETing secondary school students’ motivation towards physical education: The role of student-perceived mastery climate teaching strategies Gwen WeeldenburgID1,2*, Lars BorghoutsID1, Tim van de Laak1, Teun Remmers1, Menno Slingerland1, Steven Vos1,2 1 School of Sport Studies, Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2 Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands * g.weeldenburg@fontys.nl Abstract The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of TARGET-based teaching strategies on students’ motivation in a Dutch secondary school PE context. We examined to what extent mastery climate teaching strategies perceived by students (independently or interactively) explain variability in students’ motivation towards PE. In total 3,150 students (48.2% girls; 51.8% boys) with a mean age of 13.91 years (SD = 1.40) completed the Behavioural Regula- tions in Physical Education Questionnaire (BRPEQ), measuring students’ autonomous motiva- tion, controlled motivation and amotivation, and the Mastery Teaching Perception Questionnaire (MTP-Q), measuring student-perceived application of mastery TARGET teach- ing strategies. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that after controlling for gender, age, and educational type, the predictive effects of the perceived mastery climate teaching strategies differed by motivational outcome. Overall, students who reported higher levels of perceived application of mastery TARGET teaching strategies showed more autonomous motivation and

less amotivation. Specifically, the teaching strategies within the task structure were the stron- gest predictors for students’ autonomous motivation and amotivation. No meaningful statisti- cally significant two-way interaction effects between any of the TARGET variables were found, supporting the proposition of an additive relationship between the TARGET teaching strategies. Introduction Positive experiences in physical education (PE) influence students’ motivation and attitude towards physical activity (PA) and sport, which, in turn, increase the intention to participate in physical activities outside school [1–3]. In terms of promoting active involvement and effec- tive learning within PE lessons themselves, the understanding of students’ experiences and motivation can also be of great value for PE teachers. To this aim, the self-determination the- ory (SDT) [4, 5] can be helpful. This widely accepted and frequently applied theory of human motivation provides insight into what ‘moves’ students to action, or more specifically, what causes and energizes students’ behaviour [5]. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274964 September 22, 2022 1 / 14 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Weeldenburg G, Borghouts L, Laak Tvd, Remmers T, Slingerland M, Vos S (2022) TARGETing secondary school students’ motivation towards physical education: The role of student- perceived mastery climate teaching strategies. PLoS ONE 17(9): e0274964. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0274964

Editor: Gwo-Jen Hwang, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, TAIWAN Received: January 30, 2022 Accepted: September 7, 2022 Published: September 22, 2022 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274964 Copyright: © 2022 Weeldenburg et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.