The present study aimed to examine the relationship among the PE climate (i.e., autonomy support, relatedness support, task-involving climate and ego-involving climate), three basic psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness), self-determined motivation, and MVPA of secondary school students. Findings showed that the autonomy support and task-involving climate students perceived were positively related to all three psychological needs, whereas relatedness support positively predicted autonomy and relatedness, and ego-involving climate were only positively related to competence. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness positively predicted self-determined motivation toward the MVPA. Finally, the self-determined motivation positively predicted the MVPA of the secondary school students.
Self-determined motivation
Results of the present study indicated that the self-determined motivation of secondary school student was positively related to their MVPA during PE and supported our first hypothesis. This finding was also consistent with the tenet of SDT [22] and previous studies in PE context [15, 17, 28]. However, the findings of the present study revealed that self-determined motivation only explained 1.4% of the variance in student MVPA, which was lower than the results of previous studies under the PE context, ranging from 2% to 4% [15, 17, 28]. The PE lessons structure, nature of the Chinese PE curriculum, and Chinese educational culture may contribute to the low interpretation rate of variance in student MVPA. First, the Chinese PE curriculum is compulsory, and each student must attend PE classes. Moreover, the class content and PE activities are arranged by secondary schools and teachers, and students cannot choose activities in PE class. Therefore, student motivation is a non-factor in PE classes, possibly resulting in the small contribution of self-determined motivation to student MVPA. Second, education in China is based on Confucian principles, which have educated students to be obedient and place emphasis on self-control and personal restraint [50, 51]. This practice may lead to students’ lack of knowledge of their own motivation and interests, thus weakening the effect of their self-determined motivation on their MVPA participation. Although self-determined motivation only explained 1.4% of the variance in student MVPA, it remained important, as students with self-determined motivation were likely to continue to participate in MVPA out of the PE class. Based on this finding, PE teachers are advised to adopt certain instructional strategies (e.g., cooperative learning) and activities to stimulate students’ interest and improve students’ self-determined motivation, which ultimately enhances MVPA in PE.
Psychological needs
Results showed that the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness positively predicted self-determined motivation. Students were more likely to be intrinsically motivated to participate in MVPA when they perceived further competence to exhibit their sport skills, had more opportunities to choose, and were more connected with peers or classmates in PE classes. This finding supported the secondary hypothesis, and it was aligned with the previous PE-related studies under the SDT framework [24, 31, 33, 35, 39, 40, 52, 53]. Furthermore, three psychological need satisfaction mediated the relationship between PE climate created by teachers and self-determined motivation, which was consistent with the tenet of SDT [22]. The importance of the psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness were suggested by the direct and indirect relationships. The fourth hypothesis was partly supported.
Among three psychological needs, relatedness was the strongest predictor of self-determined motivation in this study. This finding was consistent with the studies of Standage et al. [24] and Cox et al. [53], but it was different from other studies [33, 46, 52] that found perceived competence as the most important variable to self-determined motivation. Deci and Ryan [21, 22] argued that the relative effect of each psychological need satisfaction on self-determined motivation might vary depending on the functional significance of the context. The strongest influence of relatedness may be related to the emphasis of PE on student cooperation in China. The Chinese Curriculum Standard for Physical Education and Health of the primary and middle schools indicated that one of the objectives of the PE curriculum was to develop student social adaption [54]. Certain pedagogical models that addressed student collaboration (e.g., cooperative learning approach) were recommended to PE teachers to develop students’ collectivism and cooperative consciousness [54]. More opportunities were provided for students to interact with peers in PE classes, possibly allowing them to find PE fun and exciting; thus they are more willing to participate in PE activities. The low importance of student autonomy and competence in SDT in this study is also understandable because of the students’ insufficient autonomy in PE classes and the weakening importance of sports skills and sports performance in the current PE learning assessment system [54].
Influence of PE climate
The finding of this study showed that autonomy support positively predicted the three psychological needs. Specifically, students felt autonomous, competent, and related when perceiving autonomy support with low control. This finding supported the third hypothesis and was congruent with previous studies in the context of PE [33, 34]. Furthermore, the magnitude of the standardized regression coefficients from autonomy support to the three psychological needs was found to be the highest among the four types of classroom climate, suggesting that autonomy support mostly influenced the satisfaction of the three psychological needs. However, the Chinese traditional teaching style was authoritarian or controlling in PE classes [55]. The mean score of student perceptions of autonomy support climate was lower than relatedness support and task-involving climates in our study also confirmed this fact.
With regard to relatedness support, research findings indicated that student learning in a PE environment where good relationship among students were established felt more autonomous and related in PE, which was consistent with previous research [53]. Unlike the third hypothesis, the path from relatedness support to student competence was insignificant, revealing that the relatedness support PE teachers created could not predict student perception of competence in PE. The possible reason was that the harmonious relationship and emphasis on cooperation among students might weaken competition among students [56], distracting student attention from their competence and performance in PE.
Research findings showed that the student perception of task-involving climate was positively and significantly related to psychological need satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Students felt more autonomous, competent, and related when they perceived that PE teachers emphasized their effort and self-reference on success or progress. These findings were aligned with previous study in the context of PE [39] and sport context [57]. However, unlike the third hypothesis, the results showed that ego-involving climate was positively associated with competence and not significantly related to autonomy and relatedness. Such a climate resulted in competition among students, which might help improve their sports competence [58]. The nonsignificant influence of ego-involving climate on relatedness and autonomy was also accepted because this type of climate does not address student connectedness and autonomy.
Given the importance of the motivational climate on autonomy, competence and relatedness, the class climate that focused on autonomy, competence, relatedness of students is needed to promote student psychological needs. PE teachers should provide autonomy support and are suggested to put special effort in giving students more freedom to make choices, involving them in decision making, and respecting their personal volition during PE classes. Relatedness support should be cultivated, and PE teachers should set challenging goal for cooperative groups, and emphasize the importance of team progress so as to pull students together as a group. Although ego-involving climate contributed to improving students’ perceived competence, its adoption by PE teachers is prudent because it emphasizes the normative comparison among students [59]. Finally, PE teachers are suggested to create the task-involving climate that emphasizes effort, progress on self-referenced criterion, learning new things during the PE lessons by a variety of teaching strategies and methods (e.g., TARGET approach [37]).
Strengths and limitations
The present study has several important strengths. First, it was the first to examine the relationship among the PE climate from the four dimensions, the satisfaction of psychological needs, motivation, and accelerometer-determined MVPA in secondary school students. Second, objective measures were adopted to evaluate the MVPA of secondary school students to eliminate the bias of subjective scales. Third,the present study provided the new insight into understanding how the manners by which students perceived the PE climate created by PE teachers had different influence on autonomy, competence and relatedness. However, this study has some limitations. First, the results of the current study should not be interpreted as causal to cross-sectional research. Therefore, longitudinal and intervention studies must be conducted in the future. Second, Participants were from three secondary school in Shanghai, China. Thus, the results of this study might not be used to generalize situations in other populations. Future research should expand the population beyond Shanghai to other regions or countries. The third limitation was the use of the SDT index to assess the students’ motivation. Future study should focus on analyzing the relationship among the intrinsic motivation, integrated motivation, identified motivation, introjected motivation, external motivation, amotivation and MVPA in PE. Fourth, this study did not consider the influence of demographic variables such as gender and age when analyzing the relationship between SDT variables and MVPA. Future studies should consider the influence of demographic variables.