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

According to SDT, student motivation ranges from amotivation through controlled moti- vation (i.e., introjected and external regulation) to high-quality autonomous motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, integrated and identified regulation) [5]. Applied to a PE context, amoti- vation refers to a state in which students find no meaning or value in the PE activity and will likely have no intention to participate in it. Controlled motivation refers to students acting out of feelings of internal or external pressure, while autonomous motivation is characterized by students experiencing a sense of volition, identification, or enjoyment [5]. Overall, autono- mous forms of student motivation are correlated with more adaptive outcomes, such as increased PA [6], enjoyment, concentration and vitality [2–4]. In contrast, controlled forms of student motivation and amotivation are associated with more maladaptive outcomes, such as disengagement, boredom and unhappiness [2–4]. According to SDT the different types of motivation are the result of social and environmental factors that can frustrate or satisfy stu- dents’ basic psychological needs of autonomy (i.e., sense of volition and willingness), compe- tence (i.e., experience of effectiveness and mastery) and relatedness (i.e., sense of connecting to and feeling important to others [4, 5]. By realizing a PE learning environment in which stu- dents’ basic psychological needs are nurtured, the PE teacher is able to facilitate students’ autonomous motivation [5–7], whereas a learning environment in which these psychological

needs are frustrated results in controlled motivation and amotivation [5–7]. A contemporary theory detailing key aspects of the learning environment and related prac- tical applicable teaching strategies, is the achievement goal theory (AGT) [8]. AGT provides an insight into how the environmental structure of, and situational cues from the teacher-created learning environment (i.e., motivational climate) affects student motivation [9]. Based on how students perceive the learning environment two types of motivational climates are defined: mastery (or task-involving) climate and performance (or ego-involving) climate [10, 11]. In a mastery climate the students perceive the importance of learning, personal development, effort towards task mastery, individual improvement, and collaboration (i.e., self-referenced criteria for success). In contrast, in a performance climate the students perceive that the emphasis is placed on results, winning and social comparison (i.e., norm-referenced criteria for success) [12]. Research in the context of PE and sport has demonstrated that mastery climates–in com- parison to performance climates–are positively associated with a range of desirable learning and motivational outcomes [1, 9, 12]. Vansteenkiste et al. [13], have theorised that the goals of a behaviour as defined by AGT, can be considered the ‘what’ in motivation, whilst the underlying reasons for a behaviour as defined by SDT, constitute the ‘why’. To gain enriching insights and a better understanding of

potential underlying mechanism concerning students (lack of) motivation, scholars increas- ingly use this multi-theoretical perspective [14]. Several studies (e.g., [15, 16]) illustrated that the combination of the theoretical frameworks of the SDT and AGT can provide novel and practical insights. For example, Garcı´a-Gonza´les et al. [17] showed that a mastery climate sup- ports students’ autonomous motivation through the experience of basic psychological needs satisfaction, while in a performance climate these needs are frustrated, leading to negative motivational outcomes. Establishing a learning climate that supports student motivation and optimises learning and achievement is a complex task within the PE setting. Therefore, extensive knowledge of motivational climate structures and teaching strategies is needed [18]. In order to support PE teachers in creating a favourable mastery climate, the TARGET framework [19, 20] is consid- ered useful [12, 21]. TARGET is an acronym for six teaching structures that enable the teacher to design effective teaching strategies to optimise the motivational PE learning climate: task (design of learning activities), authority (opportunities and location of decision-making), rec- ognition (way of distribution of feedback and reinforcement), grouping (process and procedure PLOS ONE Impact of perceived teaching strategies on student motivation in secondary physical education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274964 September 22, 2022 2 / 14 Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.