The Relationship Between Teaching Styles and Motivation to Teach Among Physical Education Teachers

摘要

This study aims to investigate how teachers' motivation to teach is related to different teaching styles. A hundred and seventy six physical education teachers from five European countries participated in the study. Teachers' motivation was measured using an instrument developed by Roth et al., based on the Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, ) which was tested for suitability for use with physical education teachers. The use of teaching styles was assessed through teachers' self-reported data according to the description of teaching styles presented by Curtner-Smith et al., . The revised confirmatory factor model of the teachers' motivation instrument, with three factors, met the criteria for satisfactory fit indices. The results showed that teachers were more intrinsically motivated to teach than externally. Cross-cultural comparison indicated that the Spanish teachers were more intrinsically motivated whilst Lithuanian teachers were more externally motivated than teachers from the other four countries. Teachers from all five countries reported a more frequent use of reproductive styles than productive styles. The results of the present study confirmed the hypotheses that teachers' autonomous motivation is related to the student-centered or productive teaching styles whilst non-autonomously motivated teachers adopt more teacher-centered or reproductive teaching styles. Intrinsic and introjected motivation was significantly higher among teachers who more frequently employed productive teaching styles than teachers who used them less frequently. Intrinsically motivated teachers using more productive teaching styles can contribute more to the promotion physical activity among students.Key points class="unordered" style="list-style-type:disc">PE teachers were more intrinsically motivated to teach than externally.Spanish PE teachers were more intrinsically motivated, whereas Lithuanian PE teachers were more externally motivated.Teachers from all five countries reported a more frequent use of reproductive styles than productive styles.Teachers' autonomous motivation is related to student-centered teaching styles and not autonomously motivated teachers adopt more teacher-centered teaching styles.Intrinsic and introjected motivations were significantly higher among PE teachers using frequently productive teaching styles. class="kwd-title">Key words: Physical Activity, motivation, self-determination, teaching styles class="head no_bottom_margin" id="sec1-1title">IntroductionThere has been growing concern in recent years about the low level of young people's participation in physical activity (PA). Significantly, there has also been a substantial increase in studies investigating students' motivation to participate in Physical Education (PE) and other types of PA, we may speculate therefore about possible links between levels of motivation and participation. This study highlights the key role of PE teachers in seeking to redress the apparent disaffection of young people with engaging in physical activities, which may lead to lifelong benefits. If people are to enjoy the benefits of physical health and wellbeing from school days throughout their adult life, it is imperative that schools establish a strong foundation in PA by impressing upon young people the importance of life-long PA. In preparing the students for lifelong PA (Corbin, ) asserts that teachers must educate and motivate students by encouraging them to engage in PA during their leisure-time. Several studies have shown a strong correlation between students' motivation for PA in a school PE context being transferred into a leisure-time PA context (Hagger et al., ; ; ; ). The autonomy-supportive behavior of teachers has an important role in this transfer of skills and motivation. Reeve and Jang, noted that autonomous support is the interpersonal behavior one person engenders to engage and nurture another person's inner motivational resources. The characteristics of autonomy-supportive and controlling teaching behaviors have been identified by several authors (Assor et al., ; Reeve and Jang, ; Reeve et al., ). For instance, taking into account student preferences, offering encouragement, and allowing them to work independently are characteristics of autonomy-supportive behavior (Reeve and Jang, ). Assor et al., have described the autonomy-supportive teacher as responsive (e.g. acknowledges the students' feelings and perspectives), supportive (e.g. praises the quality of performance) and explicative (e.g. provides a rationale for tasks). They provide choices and opportunities for initiative taking and independent work, and they encourage discussion. In contrast, controlling teachers use commands to direct students towards correct solutions and motivate through pressure (e.g. threats, criticism and deadlines). Taking into account that ideally the teaching-learning process is based on a mutual relationship between teacher and student, investigating teachers' motivation to enhance, reinforce and consolidate students' motivation to learn, may contribute to our knowledge of how to promote PA among young adolescents. Whereas the relationships between different teaching styles and pupils' motivation have been widely reported (Mosston and Ashworth, ; Papaioannou and Goudas, ; Papaioannou and Kouli, href="#ref26" rid="ref26" class=" bibr popnode">1999), to our knowledge the relationships between teacher motivation and teaching styles have not been analyzed to date.Teaching styles: Mosston's Spectrum of teaching styles (Mosston and Ashworth, href="#ref24" rid="ref24" class=" bibr popnode">2002) established a framework of possible options in the relationship between teacher and learner and was based on the central importance of decision-making. The authors grouped these into pre-impact, impact and post-impact categories and proposed that these govern all teaching. The pre-impact set is concerned with decisions made at the preparation stage before teaching, and involves subject matter, learning objectives, organization and presentation. The impact set includes decisions relating to performance and execution while the post-impact set includes evaluation of performance and feedback from learner to teacher. The Spectrum (Mosston and Ashworth, href="#ref24" rid="ref24" class=" bibr popnode">2002) incorporates ten teaching styles based on the degree to which the teacher or the student assumes responsibility for what occurs in a lesson. This describes a continuum, where at one extreme is the direct, teacher-led approach (reproductive style) and at the other lies a much more open-ended and student-centered style (productive style) where the teacher acts only as facilitator. Student-centered teaching styles can also be considered as autonomy-supportive behavior and teacher-centered teaching styles as controlling behavior.Morgan et al., href="#ref23" rid="ref23" class=" bibr popnode">2005 investigated the influence of teacher behavior in relation to teaching styles on motivational climate and showed that the pupil-centered reciprocal and guided discovery styles resulted in more mastery and less performance focused teaching behaviors than the traditional command or practice styles. Recently, Sicilia-Camacho and Brown (href="#ref34" rid="ref34" class=" bibr popnode">2008) described the revised concept of the Spectrum of teaching styles. Accordingly, the conceptual basis of Spectrum has moved away from setting one teaching style against another, or from a versus to a non-versus style. In short, there is no single superior teaching style or teaching-learning approach (Mosston and Ashworth, href="#ref24" rid="ref24" class=" bibr popnode">2002). All teaching styles, when used appropriately, contribute to human development in different ways. Consequently, the use and significance of each individual style will be determined by the teaching objectives. A plethora of studies has dealt with the effects of different teaching styles on widely recognized objectives of PE like motor skill acquisition, affective state, cognition and social skills (see for reviews Chatoupis, href="#ref6" rid="ref6" class=" bibr popnode">2009; Chatoupis and Vagenas, href="#ref7" rid="ref7" class=" bibr popnode">2011). Chatoupis, href="#ref6" rid="ref6" class=" bibr popnode">2009 highlighted the need to investigate the outcomes and contributions of different teaching styles, for a given period of time, to teach content rather than to compare one style against another. According to the same author, in a typical school lesson most teachers use several teaching styles to meet different objectives. To date, only a few studies have examined how frequently PE teachers use different teaching styles. For example, using teachers' self-reported data, Cothran et al., href="#ref9" rid="ref9" class=" bibr popnode tag_hotlink tag_tooltip" id="__tag_336909417">2005, and Kulinna and Cothran, href="#ref22" rid="ref22" class=" bibr popnode">2005 showed that teachers use more reproductive than productive teaching styles. Command and practice styles were the most preferred reproductive styles, whereas guided discovery, convergent discovery and divergent production styles were the most employed productive teaching styles.Cothran et al., href="#ref9" rid="ref9" class=" bibr popnode tag_hotlink tag_tooltip" id="__tag_336909410">2005 also investigated cross-cultural differences in the use of the different teaching styles in seven countries (Korea, Australia, France, England, Portugal, Canada and U.S.) and found differences ranging from minor to substantial across those countries. All countries were significantly different in the use of the command style. Korean teachers differed in all styles from the other six countries. The teachers from England, Australia, and Canada reported the more frequent use of productive styles than Korean and Portuguese teachers. Given these cross-cultural findings, the present study also aims to compare the self-reported data relating specifically to the use of teaching styles in Eastern European countries with Western and Southern European countries with different cultural backgrounds.Self-determination theory: Self-determination theory (SDT) is a theory of human motivation in the 'organismic' or humanistic tradition (Deci and Ryan, href="#ref11" rid="ref11" class=" bibr popnode">1985, href="#ref13" rid="ref13" class=" bibr popnode">2000). Central to the theory is the distinction between autonomous and controlling forms of motivation. This distinction is usually viewed on a continuum reflecting the perceived origin or cause of an individual's motivated behavior in a given context (Ryan and Connell, href="#ref33" rid="ref33" class=" bibr popnode tag_hotlink tag_tooltip" id="__tag_336909409">1989). Autonomous motivation reflects acting to satisfy personally relevant goals. The prototypical form of autonomous motivation is intrinsic motivation, which lies at one end of the continuum and represents behavioral engagement for no external contingency or reinforcement. Identified regulation is a motivational construct that lies adjacent to intrinsic motivation on the continuum and represents motivation to engage in a behavior because it services intrinsic or personally relevant goals. Conversely, external regulation reflects the prototypical form of controlling motivation. Located opposite intrinsic motivation on the continuum, it reflects engaging in behavior induced by external reinforcement such as obtaining a reward or avoiding punishment. Adjacent to external regulation lies introjected regulation which reflects behavioral engagement induced by perceived internal pressures like avoiding shame or guilt, or gaining contingent self- worth or pride. The location of the motivational types on the continuum is similar to the location of teaching styles on the continuum reflecting the levels of autonomous behavior and decision- making process.Within the SDT framework Pelletier et al., href="#ref27" rid="ref27" class=" bibr popnode">2002 showed that teacher self-determination mediated the influence of teachers' perception of constraints from school authorities and student self-determination toward school on teacher provision of autonomy support. Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007 pointed out that the effect of teachers' motivation on student motivation could be the direct result of the teaching styles of the teacher. When the teacher uses productive styles, then the role of learner independence in the decision making process is highlighted. In this case we might consider the use of the productive styles by the teacher as students' autonomy-supportive teaching.Autonomous motivation for teaching promotes autonomy-supportive teaching in various ways (Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007). Firstly the authors suggest that autonomously motivated teachers possess expert knowledge in their specialist field and of the methods they use; secondly, the teachers fully understand and are sympathetic to autonomous motivation and its benefits and thirdly, these teachers exhibit greater resilience to the pressures of achievement, are less concerned with image and favor supportive teaching methodology.Based on these considerations and aforementioned similarities in respect of the continuum we assume the existence of relations between teaching styles and teachers' motivation to teach.Measures of teacher motivation: Unfortunately, there has been little research on teacher motivation to teach (Butler, href="#ref5" rid="ref5" class=" bibr popnode">2007; Retelsdorf et al., href="#ref31" rid="ref31" class=" bibr popnode">2010; Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007; Taylor et al., href="#ref36" rid="ref36" class=" bibr popnode tag_hotlink tag_tooltip" id="__tag_336909412">2008). Butler, href="#ref5" rid="ref5" class=" bibr popnode">2007 and Retelsdorf et al., href="#ref31" rid="ref31" class=" bibr popnode">2010 investigated teacher motivation with an instrument based on Achievement Goal Theory (AGT), whereas studies by Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007 and Taylor et al., href="#ref36" rid="ref36" class=" bibr popnode tag_hotlink tag_tooltip" id="__tag_336909414">2008 used instruments based on SDT. The instrument developed by Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007 was specially designed to study the autonomous motivation for teaching. However, to date, according to our knowledge, only Taylor et al., href="#ref36" rid="ref36" class=" bibr popnode tag_hotlink tag_tooltip" id="__tag_336909415">2008 have investigated PE teachers' motivation toward work. They used the Work Motivation Inventory (WMI; Blais et al., href="#ref3" rid="ref3" class=" bibr popnode">1993) to determine the antecedents for teachers' motivation. The result of their study showed that perceptions of students' self-determination motivation and teachers' autonomous orientation positively predicted teachers' psychological need satisfaction, which in turn influenced teachers' motivation. The WMI reflects the general motives of teachers towards work and showed an appropriate factorial validity. In addition, the goodness of fit indices of the developed AGT based instrument indicated the existence of factor validity (Butler, href="#ref5" rid="ref5" class=" bibr popnode">2007; Retelsdorf et al., href="#ref31" rid="ref31" class=" bibr popnode">2010).Despite the rigor of the analysis presented by Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007 in their development of the special instrument to measure teacher's motivation to teach, no other study has adopted a confirmatory analysis (CFA) to examine its construct validity. Since CFA enables a priori specification and tests its adequacy against observation, it is considered an appropriate method for the evaluation of the construct validity in psychometric inventories (Hu and Bentler, href="#ref20" rid="ref20" class=" bibr popnode">1999). CFA also tests the discriminant validity of construct through the inter-correlation among the factors (Bagozzi and Kimmel, href="#ref2" rid="ref2" class=" bibr popnode">1995). We therefore attempt to provide further support for the validity of the instrument developed by Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007 adopting the CFA approach in the present study. id="__p17" class="p p-last">This study aims to test whether the motivational dimensions developed by Roth et al., href="#ref32" rid="ref32" class=" bibr popnode">2007 on the basis of SDT will be appropriate for PE teachers from different European countries and how these are related with teachers' perception of their teaching styles. In terms of specific hypotheses, it is expected that the teachers' autonomous motivation is linked to the student-centered styles, and that non-autonomously motivated teachers adopt more teacher-centered styles.