Similar but different: Profiling secondary school students based on their perceived motivational climate and psychological need-based experiences in physical education

positive about the bond they have with peers either. In addition, these students report the low- est levels of perceived mastery-orientated learning climate of the three profiles. However, they still perceive the climate as more mastery-orientated than performance-orientated. The nega- tive perceivers seem to be driven by both mastery approach and performance avoidance goals. Even though most students in this profile participate frequently in sports activities outside school, they are the least active. Students in this profile value PE distinctly lower than the stu- dents in the other two profiles. In contrast, the positive perceivers report the lowest levels of need frustration and the highest levels of need satisfaction. They report strong feelings of autonomy, activities undertaken in PE are perceived as interesting, and these students feel highly competent to achieve PE-goals. The positive perceivers feel strongly connected with peers and mastery approach goals strongly drive the students in this profile. They show the most explicit contrast between the mastery approach and mastery avoidance goals. Students in this profile value PE very positively. The moderate perceivers generally show scores that are close to the mean of the total population. In contrast to the negative perceivers, these students report higher levels of support than frustration for all psychological needs. Nevertheless, they do not perceive particularly strong feelings of autonomy support. The students in this profile

perceive the PE learning climate as mastery-oriented and seem to be driven by mastery approach goals in particular. Previous studies in the context of PE have demonstrated that perceived psychological need satisfaction correlates positively to autonomous forms of motivation, while perceived need frustration is associated with controlled forms of motivation and amotivation [42,65,66,67]. In line with these findings and the tenets of SDT, students in the negative perceivers’ cluster show higher levels of controlled motivation and amotivation, and lower levels of autonomous moti- vation compared to the other clusters, while positive perceivers report high levels of autono- mous motivation and low levels of controlled motivation and amotivation. Compared to the other groups, negative perceivers experience the highest levels of related- ness frustration. Nevertheless, these students still perceive more feelings of relatedness satisfac- tion than frustration. This could indicate that, despite having a more negative experience during PE in terms of need frustration, these students do not feel excluded from the class nor being disliked by significant peers. Hence, we argue that interventions to improve motivational climate for these students could be focused more on supporting feelings of competence and autonomy, rather than relatedness. This line of argument is supported by research [40,68] which argues that some psychological needs (specifically perceived competence) are more influential predictors of autonomous forms of motivations than others.

Previous studies (for an overview see [27]) consistently indicate that a mastery climate is associated with a range of highly adaptive outcomes, including autonomous forms of motiva- tional regulations and high levels psychological need satisfaction. A mastery (or task-involv- ing) climate is thought to enhance the perception of autonomy and competence support, because achievement is based on self-referenced criteria and is therefore more self-controlled. In such a climate, feelings of success are more readily achievable than in a performance (or ego-involving) climate, with normative-based criteria [69,70]. A performance climate in PE has recently been found to positively relate to basic psychological need frustration, amotivation and boredom [71]. Our study endorses these findings. Moderate perceivers and positive per- ceivers experience a mastery PE climate and concurrently score relatively high on psychologi- cal need satisfaction and autonomous motivation. Although negative perceivers still perceive the PE climate as more mastery than performance oriented, they score only slightly above scale average on the former. Compared to the other profiles, they report relatively high levels of perceived competence- and autonomy frustration, controlled motivation and amotivation. Jaakkola et al. [72] argue that for some students the self-referenced learning climate might well Similar but different PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228859 February 10, 2020 11 / 17