Perspectives on physical education: Teacher and student perspectives on features of the learning environment

The current study compares student and teacher ratings of classroom management and class climate in physical education; class climate is assessed by the teacher-student and the student-student relations. Hence, the contribution focuses basic dimensions of teaching quality that have been shown to be associated with affective motivational variables. The study examines associations between the two perspectives, the ratings’ predictive power with regard to affective motivational student variables and the specifics of the two perspectives. In total, 2336 students and their 116 teachers participated; twelve of those teachers were interviewed. The results indicate that student and teacher ratings on average show medium correlations. Student ratings of classroom management and teacher ratings of student-student relations better predict affective motivational variables. While the other perspective does not provide additional explained variance in these analyzes, both perspectives specifically predict affective motivational variables if ratings of teacher-student relations were used as predictors. The qualitative findings indicate that the specificity of teacher ratings is characterized by divergent reference frames, a significant role of rules and rituals and a particular focus on specific subgroups. On the whole, the study contributes to a better understanding of the perspectives’ specifics with regard to features of teaching quality. © 2018, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature.