Teachers' Motivation and Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs

• Published in: Research quarterly for exercise and sport Vol. 87; no. S2; p. A83
• Main Authors: Lorenz, Kent A, Stylianou, Michalis, Kulinna, Pamela Hodges, Yu, Hyenho, Moss, Russell C, Conrad, Christine A, Mohan, Aiswarya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Taylor & Francis Ltd 01.06.2016
• Subjects: Classrooms; Likert Scales; Professional Autonomy; Psychological Needs; Schools; Teacher Motivation
• ISSN: 0270-1367; 2168-3824

One of the comprehensive school physical activity program (CSPAP) components is the integration of physical activity (PA) during the school day. One way to achieve this integration is through classroom PA integration. Self-determination theory (SDT; e.g., Ryan & Deci, 2000) is a suitable framework to examine classroom teachers' motivation to integrate PA in their classrooms. According to SDT, motivation is based on the satisfaction of 3 innate psychological needs. The purpose of this study, guided by SDT and the CSPAP framework, was to examine whether classroom teachers' perceived competence (feeling effective in interacting with the environment), relatedness (feeling security connected to others), autonomy (having a sense of volition for one's own decisions/behavior), and motivation were related to the PA breaks used. An SDT questionnaire specific to classroom PA integration was developed by making slight modifications to reliable and valid scales of SDT constructs (e.g., Carson & Chase, 2009). The questionnaire contained 44 items split into 4 subscales (Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness, Motivation) and used a 7-point Likert-type scale (7 = strongly agree). Participants (n = 69) were classroom teachers from 6 schools in central Arizona. We asked a subset of teachers (n = 49) to report the number of PA breaks they provided for their students during 3 Wellness Weeks throughout the school year, and we investigated relationships between total number of PA breaks taught across the year and components of SDT. Descriptive statistics for the 4 SDT subscales (Autonomy, M = 5.63, SD = 0.99; Competence, M = 4.01, SD = 0.85; Motivation, M = 3.53, SD = 0.82; Relatedness, M = 4.25, SD = 0.45) indicated that on average, teachers reported moderately positive (e.g., autonomy) to moderately negative levels of agreement to the SDT items. There were no significant differences across schools in the average response on the Autonomy, Competence, or Relatedness subscales; however, there were significant differences present for motivation across schools, F(4, 62) = 7.00, p , .001, h2 = .31. Descriptives for mean number of PA breaks taught during a Wellness Week (M = 5.64, SD = 4.43) during the 1st year indicated about 1 per day-with some teachers reporting no PA breaks. In addition, there were no significant associations between any of the mean SDT subscale values and the mean number of PA breaks taught by teachers. Teachers reported moderately positive or neutral agreement across the 4 SDT subscales with no relationship between SDT constructs and teaching PA breaks. This finding suggests that other factors beyond self-reported teacher autonomy, competence, relatedness, or motivation influenced the number of PA breaks taught by teachers.