Motivating teaching styles and directiveness in Physical Education

The PE teacher's intervention can be more effective if they use certain motivational styles, helping to create a positive learning environment and to promote active lifestyle habits. However, if it is perceived as a negative experience, it could demotivate the learner and provoke rejection of the practice, thus jeopardising the motor literacy process. Following a cross-sectional-correlational design, the main objective of this study was to analyse the relationships between teachers' motivational styles and directiveness in Physical Education. 500 secondary school students participated. The SIS scale was used to determine interpersonal teaching style and the PCT scale was used to assess directiveness. The results indicated that the scale dimensions correlate positively and significantly with each other, except for Chaos, which correlates negatively with Autonomy Support and Structure. The Control dimension did not show any correlation with the rest of the dimensions assessed. In addition, the cluster analysis showed two profiles of teacher motivational style perceptions: a more directive one, called "dominant", and a more autonomous profile, called "adaptive". The results reveal positive links between adaptive motivational style, which supports learner autonomy in a positive and structured learning climate, and negative links with inattention and dropout. These findings suggest that the adaptive motivational style in PE involves the learner more autonomously in tasks and can help to create positive learning situations that encourage adherence to practice.