Making physical education popular: the impact of the constraints-led approach on physical education students’ intrinsic motivation

Background Providing motivationally supportive physical education learning experiences for students is critical, since a large number disengage in the subject. One reason proposed to explain this disengagement is the perpetuation of a traditional teaching approach (TA), which fails to effectively satisfy the three basic psychological needs of students to engage in physical education (i.e. autonomy, competence, relatedness); a fundamental principle of self-determination theory. Subsequently researchers have found game-based teaching approaches to be superior to the TA in the facilitation of students’ basic psychological needs. However, the enjoyment experienced when playing team games may be the reason for the facilitation of students’ needs, regardless of the teaching approach used. Thus, it is necessary to conduct research using an individual performance activity. The constraints-led approach (CLA) is a suitable teaching approach to investigate as its pedagogical principles have been successfully applied to a variety of individual performance activities.Purpose The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of participation in a swimming lesson, underpinned by the pedagogical principles of the CLA, on school students’ self-determined intrinsic motivation.Methods The study sample consisted of 29 Year 9 male students from an Australian school. A counter-balanced, crossover, repeated measures experimental design was used, with participants experiencing two, 50-minute swimming lessons, one taught using the TA and the other taught using the CLA. Immediately after participation in each lesson, participants completed a questionnaire consisting of items from validated measures of the three basic psychological needs and the positive indices of intrinsic motivation, enjoyment and effort. After the second lesson, participants also responded to open-ended questions asking them to compare the approaches in terms of their effort invested, enjoyment experienced, and success felt. Paired t-tests were used to compare the groups’ motivation subscale mean scores for each teaching approach. Content analysis was used to check the patterns, and frequency of words used in participants’ written question responses.Results Participants reported significantly higher mean scores for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and enjoyment after experiencing the CLA swimming lesson. There was no significant difference between the two teaching approaches for the effort sub-scale. The qualitative results replicated the quantitative results, except for effort, with participants overwhelmingly reporting investing more effort in the CLA lesson.Impact statement This study has provided evidence that an alternative teaching approach, the CLA, can offer students more motivationally supportive physical education learning experiences compared to the predominantly taught TA.