Relationships Between Students' Perceived Relatedness and Motivational Outcomes in PE

Background/Purpose: According to self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), relatedness concerns students’ need to feel connected to the teacher, their peers, or the class in school settings. Research evidence revealed students who perceived that their teachers understood them, cared about them and spent time with them in class tended to be more motivated to engage in learning than students who lacked such perceptions. But this line of research has not been extensively examined in physical education (PE) settings. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between students’ perceived relatedness to the teacher and their motivational outcomes (i.e., intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, cognitive and behavior engagement) in secondary school PE.  

Method: Participants were 92 middle school (64 boys, 28 girls; M _age = 13.94 years, SD = .87) and 83 high school students (29 boys, 54 girls; M _age = 17.76, SD = .94) enrolled in PE classes at six schools in Hong Kong. Their perceived relatedness to the teacher (consisting of caring and time spending), intrinsic motivation, and perceived competence were assessed by the validated questionnaires on a 5-point Likert scale. Their cognitive and behavioral engagement was rated by their respective PE teachers on a 5-point Likert scale. All questionnaires yielded acceptable valid and reliable data.   

Analysis/Results: Simple correlations revealed two types of students’ perceived relatedness to the teacher were significantly negatively related to all motivational outcomes except intrinsic motivation (rs ranging from -.18 to -.41, ps < .05). Multiple regression analyses indicated perceived caring emerged as the only negative predictor of students’ behavioral engagement (β = -.35, p < .01), cognitive engagement (β = -.34, p < .01), and perceived competence (β = -.41, p < .01). It explained 13.4%, 17.0% and 7.0% of the variance in these three outcomes, respectively.  

Conclusions: Results of the study seem to suggest students who perceived that their teachers cared about them were less likely to engage in PE cognitively and behaviorally and were less likely to perceive that they had ability to perform in PE than those who did not perceive such caring from their teachers. This finding is provocative as it is contrary to both theoretical and empirical work. Given that this was the first study that documented negative correlations between perceived relatedness to the teacher and motivational outcomes among Hong Kong students in secondary PE, more research is needed to confirm or refute these findings.