The relationship between teaching styles and motivation to teach among physical education teachers

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how teachers’ motivation to teach is related todifferent teaching styles. A hundred and seventy six physical education teachers from five European countries par-ticipated in the study. Teachers’ motivation was measured using an instrument developed by Roth et al. (2007) based on the Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985) 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. (2001). 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 signifi-cantly higher among teachers who more frequently employed productive teaching styles than teachers who used them less frequently. Intrinsically motivated teachers using more produc-tive teaching styles can contribute more to the promotion physi-cal activity among students.