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

and its methods. In addition, permission to collect data with the students was obtained from the local school boards. The students were explained that the participation in the study was voluntary, and that there was guarantee of confidentiality and anonymity. Participants were recruited by inviting PE teachers from a national PE network to partici- pate in the study with their students. A convenience sample of 55 specialist PE teachers (22 females; 33 males; M age = 36.89; SD = 9.49) and their students from 12 secondary schools in the Netherlands participated in this cross-sectional study. In the Netherlands, all PE teachers in secondary education are specialist teachers who have obtained their teacher qualifications through a four-year physical education teacher education bachelor’s course. PE in these schools was mixed gender grouped and mandatory for two lessons (of 50–60 minutes each) per week throughout the school year. In total 3,150 students (1518 girls; 48.2%, 1632 boys; 51.8%) with a mean age of 13.91 years (SD = 1.40) completed a web-based questionnaire near the end of the school year. The questions concerned students’ PE experiences during the past schoolyear. The students took an average of 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire and were supervised by a teacher who was well informed about the procedure. The various educa- tional tracks at the Dutch secondary school level were equally represented within the final sam- ple: pre-vocational 36.1%; senior general 28.8%; and university preparatory 35.1%. Measures

Student motivation. Students’ autonomous motivation, controlled motivation and amo- tivation towards PE in general was assessed using a modified version of the Behavioural Regu- lations in Physical Education Questionnaire (BRPEQ; [29]). The original BRPEQ includes 20 items reflecting autonomous motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, 4 items; identified regula- tion, 4 items), controlled motivation (i.e., introjected regulation, 4 items; external regulation, 4 items), and amotivation (4 items). BRPEQ, just as the BREQ-II it was based upon, does not measure integrated regulation, because research has shown that this is empirically indistin- guishable from identified and intrinsic regulation through self-reports in children and adoles- cents [30]. To increase the usability and feasibility of the total questionnaire applied in this study, the number of items of the BRPEQ was reduced from 20 to 12 items based on the factor analyses by [30] and in line with previous research of [31]. The introductory stem ‘In general I put effort in PE class. . .’ was followed by 4 items reflecting autonomous motivation (2 x 2 items covering intrinsic motivation and identified regulation; e.g., ‘because I enjoy it’; ‘because I find PE personally meaningful’), 4 items reflected controlled motivation (2 x 2 items covering introjected and external regulation; e.g., ‘because I have to prove myself’; ‘because I feel the pressure of others to participate’) and 4 items reflected amotivation (e.g., ‘I find PE a waste of

time’). All items were administered on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum-likelihood estima- tion was performed to test the factorial validity of the items extracting into autonomous moti- vation, controlled motivation and amotivation, by using Mplus 8.0 [32]. Prior to conducting the CFA, the sampling adequacy for analysis was tested by the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure. The KMO value was .89, which is well above the limit of .50 [33] and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p < 0.001). Results of the CFA yielded an acceptable fit χ2 = 539.459, p < .001, CFI = .971, RMSEA = .061, SRMR = .067. Internal consistencies for autono- mous motivation and amotivation were satisfactory with Cronbach’s alphas of .87 and .85, respectively. The Cronbach’s alpha of .66 for controlled motivation was less satisfactory. How- ever, [34] notes that when dealing with psychological constructs, values below .70 can, realisti- cally, be expected. Furthermore, a lower number of items can have a profound negative effect on alpha [35]. Since there were only four items for controlled motivation, and deleting items 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 4 / 14