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

No evidence of statistically significant two-way interaction effects between the predictor variables was found for autonomous motivation and amotivation (p > .05 for all interactions). With regard to controlled motivation a significant two-way interaction effect was found for task × recognition (F(23, 3126) = 5.368), p < .001). Given the negative interaction coefficient (B = -.123, p = .003) these predictors seem to have a combined inhibitory effect on controlled motivation. Discussion and conclusion The purpose of this study was to gain more insight into how PE teachers can effectively manip- ulate the teaching environment to foster a mastery climate and with that potentially affect stu- dent motivation positively. Therefore, we examined the impact of the student-perceived application of mastery climate teaching strategies on secondary school students’ motivation. As recommended by several scholars [27, 28] we also examined the unique contribution of the individual TARGET structures to identify which structures have the greatest impact on stu- dents’ motivation in the context of PE. Consistent with our hypothesis, students who reported higher levels of perceived application of mastery task, authority, recognition, grouping and evaluation teaching strategies showed higher levels of autonomous motivation and less amoti- vation. These findings are in line with AGT theory and empirical studies which have shown that perceptions of a higher mastery-orientated climate are associated with autonomous moti-

vational regulations [9, 17, 23]. However, the results of the hierarchical regression analyses provided us with a more detailed understanding and revealed that the predictive effects of the perceived mastery climate teaching strategies differed by motivational outcome. Table 4. Summary of hierarchical regression analysis for variables predicting amotivation. Variables B SE β R2 ΔR2 Step 1 .01 Gender (boys = 1, girls = 2) -.07 .04 -.04� Age .00 .01 .00 Educational Type 1 ref. ref. ref. Educational Type 2 -.18 .05 -.08�� Educational Type 3 .01 .04 .00 Step 2 .15 .14 Gender (boys = 1, girls = 2) -.07 .03 -.04� Age .00 .01 .00 Educational Type 1 ref. ref. ref. Educational Type 2 -.16 .04 -.07�� Educational Type 3 .02 .04 .01 Task -.38 .03 -.26�� Authority .13 .03 .10�� Recognition -.13 .03 -.10�� Grouping .00 .03 .00 Evaluation -.18 .03 -.13�� Note. N = 3150; B = Unstandardised regression coefficient; SE = Standard error; β = Standardised regression coefficient; R2 = Amount of variance explained; Educational Type 1 = pre-vocational, Educational Type 2 = senior general, Educational Type 3 = university preparatory �p < .05. ��p < .01. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274964.t004 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 9 / 14