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Abstract
Background: The Sport Education curriculum model with its goals to develop competent, literate and enthusiastic sportspersons has been gaining popularity across the globe. To date, studies have yet to investigate the objective motivational climate of Sport Education.
Aims: The purpose of this study was to measure and describe the objective motivational climate of a Sport Education season conducted in a Russian school.
Method: The participants in this study were 21 ninth-grade Russian students (12 boys and 9 girls) who did not have any previous experience with Sport Education. The teacher in the study was a Russian native who had 4 years of experience teaching and researching Sport Education in schools and colleges across the USA and Russia. The study took place in a public coeducational school located in a city (population 300,000) in the central part of Russia. Classes met three times a week for the entire academic quarter (6 weeks) for a total of 18 lessons, and each lesson was scheduled for 40 minutes. The TARGET (task, authority, recognition and evaluation, grouping and timing) motivational climate variables were collected by analyzing the video of every lesson. The data collection protocol included identifying and coding ‘mastery’, ‘neither’, and ‘performance’ variables of each TARGET structure. The computerized software, BEST, used in data collection allowed recordings of multiple and overlapping frequency behaviors as well duration behaviors. Following the protocol of Morgan and colleagues, the mean percentage of ‘mastery’, ‘performance’ and ‘neither’ teaching behaviors were calculated for each of the TARGET categories individually in each phase of the Sport Education season (skill practice, practice competition, formal competition) as well as the total for the entire season. The mean percentages of frequency of coded behaviors for task, recognition/evaluation, and timing were calculated, whereas mean percentages of duration of coded behaviors were calculated for the authority, grouping and time structures of TARGET.
Results: The results of video analysis demonstrated that this Sport Education season had more mastery-oriented and less performance-oriented teacher behaviors. The objective motivational climate of skill practice and practice competition phase had more of a mastery-oriented climate, while performance TARGET behaviors in the competition phase were more prevalent.
Conclusion: The overall objective motivational climate of this Sport Education season was neither mastery-oriented nor performance-oriented, but rather an intermingling of the two approaches. Consequently, teachers must be cognizant of the motivational climate and understand which elements in Sport Education contribute to the mastery climate and which to performance climate. Since a mastery climate is positively related to a range of positive student outcomes, it is crucial to stay true to the model when teaching, recognize the elements that contribute to performance orientation, and when possible, emphasize mastery structures. One of the ways of promoting mastery structures in Sport Education seems to be in increasing the mastery-oriented teacher behaviors in evaluation and recognition structures.