Physical inactivity is one of the leading modifiable causes of death and disease in Australia [
1]. Regular physical activity (PA) decreases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some cancers, obesity, osteoporosis, and other chronic conditions [
2], but many children and adolescents in Australia are not sufficiently active to accrue associated health benefits [
3]. In response to this evidence and data showing rising levels of childhood and adolescent obesity [
3], public health efforts have emphasized the importance of schools in the promotion of PA among youth [
4‐
8].
Recently, the Australian Government-commissioned Crawford Report [
9] described the central role of physical education (PE) programs for increasing the PA levels of youth. PE lessons reach the majority of school-aged youth, and therefore the promotion of PA through PE has far-reaching health implications for millions of Australian youth [
9]. Students’ PA levels in PE lessons, however, are often very low [
10]. To achieve increased PA both within and beyond PE lessons, it is important for school-aged youth to be sufficiently and appropriately motivated [
11,
12]. PE teachers can play an important role in motivating students to be physically active within [
13], and beyond PE lessons [
14]. Youth who lack motivation in PE often report negative experiences and relationships with their PE teachers [
15], which is why it is imperative for researchers to examine teaching strategies for PE teachers to motivate their students more effectively toward achievement of higher levels of PA.
Theoretical framework
The current study is based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) [
16,
17] which has been widely applied to a variety of life contexts, including education [
18], sport [
19], exercise [
20], and PE [
11,
21]. According to SDT tenets, social-contextual factors (e.g., teaching strategies used by PE teachers) can affect individuals’ motivation by satisfying (or undermining) three key psychological needs: 1) autonomy: the need to self-endorse activities and beliefs; 2) competence: the need to effectively interact with one’s environment and yield desirable outcomes; and 3) relatedness: the need to feel connected and accepted by significant others [
16,
17].
In the context of PE, when teachers use motivational strategies that satisfy key psychological needs, students will feel more self-determined to participate in PE, and thus will be more physically active during lessons [
11]. Motivational strategies that support student needs include: (1) “choice”: providing students with the opportunity to make decisions about the activities they undertake during lessons; (2) “relevance”: providing a rationale and explaining to students the relevance of an activity; (3) “acknowledgement”: acknowledging students’ difficulties when learning skills; and (4) “feedback”: providing feedback using praise for students’ effort and improvement. Previous studies have shown that these strategies can satisfy the three key psychological needs in the PA context, and are essential to well-being, learning, and the development of autonomous forms of motivation (e.g., intrinsic motivation) [
22‐
24].
In contrast, teachers’ motivational strategies that undermine student autonomy (e.g., controlling strategies such as discouragement of student initiative, overt teacher control, conditional student acceptance and praise) may thwart students’ psychological needs and thereby result in controlling forms of extrinsic motivation or lack of motivation, anxiety, and poor psychological adjustment [
25]. In the PE context, such dysfunctional motivational strategies may reduce PA levels. Experimental research in the contexts of education [
26] and PA promotion in adults [
27] has supported these theoretical predictions and a recent study showed that providing children (aged 8–12) with choice increased physical activity in a laboratory setting [
28].
Despite the apparent influential role of teachers’ motivational strategies, intervention studies to enhance teachers’ motivational strategies in PE are rare. Chatzisarantis and Hagger [
29] evaluated the effects of an SDT-based PE intervention in which the five teachers in the experimental condition learned the four aforementioned motivational strategies, and five teachers in the comparison condition learned only the “relevance” and “feedback” strategies. Students in the experimental condition, whose teachers had also learned the “choice” and “acknowledgement” strategies, reported greater self-determined motivation toward PE and more leisure time PA than comparison participants. Although these results are encouraging, limitations of the study include: (1) the lack of measurement of PA within the PE lesson and the reliance on self-report PA measures in leisure time; (2) the lack of objective assessment of teacher behaviors leading to an inability to determine to what degree each of the strategies was employed by teachers; and (3) the inability to determine which of the four strategies influenced student motivation. Indeed, Chatzisarantis and Hagger [
29] investigated the additive effect of “choice” and “acknowledgement” to “relevance” and “feedback”, but no comparison was made with teachers’ usual teaching style.
In a recent experimental study, Cheon et al. [
30] investigated the effect of an SDT-based training program for PE teachers on student motivation and intentions to be physically active outside school. Training involved five hours of multi-media presentations and discussion where teachers learned four types of SDT-based motivational strategies. Compared with controls, students whose teachers had participated in this training reported greater increases in needs satisfaction, self-determined motivation, and intentions to be physically active outside school. Once again, these findings are promising, but the effect of autonomy support on PA during PE lessons was not assessed, and only PA intentions, not actual PA behavior, was measured. Also, Cheon et al. [
30] reported that all four types of motivational strategies were implemented by teachers, but the study design did not allow the authors to assess the extent to which each strategy influenced student motivation and other outcomes. Indeed, all teachers learned all four strategies and, thus, it is unknown if some strategies were more effective than others.
In the present study, we addressed a limitation of the Chatzisarantis and Hagger [
29] and Cheon et al. [
30] studies by employing an objective measure of PA within PE lessons. We also examined the independent effects of different motivational teaching strategies. Specifically, we compared strategies designed to explain relevance and provide choice.
Explaining the relevance of activities and providing opportunities for students to make choices are considered important strategies to promote autonomous student motivation [
31]. In academic classrooms, there is evidence that explaining relevance may have a greater impact on student motivation and engagement than providing choice [
31,
32]. To the authors’ knowledge, no PE-based research has investigated the importance of explaining relevance to students. However, the influence of choice in PE lessons has received some attention. Ward and colleagues [
33] investigated the influence of providing adolescent girls with a single choice per PE lesson. They found that this strategy increased self-determined motivation, but did not influence PA levels during PE lessons (as measured by pedometers). It is possible, however, that Ward et al’s [
33] decision to only provide one opportunity for choice during a lesson may have minimized treatment effects. Indeed, a meta-analysis [
34] found that providing two to four opportunities for choice had the greatest effect on motivation. Lonsdale et al. [
11] compared student PA during structured lessons (no choice) and complete free choice periods, during which equipment was provided, but students were able to decide for themselves what activities they undertook. This manipulation resulted in greater PA during the free choice period. Neither Ward et al. [
33] nor Lonsdale et al. [
11] investigated varying levels of choice or the effect of any other autonomy supportive strategy (e.g., explaining relevance) on students’ need satisfaction, motivation, or PA levels. As noted, no research has investigated the independent effects of these strategies on PA in PE lessons. In the present study, we examined these independent effects by comparing the effectiveness of: (1) “relevance” - explaining the relevance of activities; (2) “providing choice” - providing a number of PA options selected by the teacher; (3) "free choice” – providing complete free choice of activities.