Are teachers’ subjective feelings linked with need-supportive and need-thwarting motivating styles? A cross-lagged pilot study in physical education

This article examines the relations between the teachers’ subjective feeling and their motivating teaching style during physical education lessons. Doing so, it aimed at better understanding the emotional antecedents of the teaching behaviors. Twelve volunteer physical education teachers were filmed with their respective classes to assess the motivating style they used during their intervention. Immediately after, the subjective feelings they felt during the lesson were assessed using the affective slider in a video-based session. Cross-lagged multilevel modeling was then performed, controlling for emotional exhaustion level and demographic factors. Results showed that, at the within level, subjective pleasant feelings predicted positively the relatedness-supportive dimension of the motivating style, and negatively the controlling dimension. At the between level, the controlling dimension of the motivating style was positively related to the pleasant subjective feelings while the relatedness-thwarting dimension was negatively related to them. While literature has mainly examined the cognitive antecedents of teachers’ motivating styles, this study emphasizes the emotional processes occurring during the lesson. Based on the conceptual framework of teachers’ emotions model proposed by Frenzel (2014), results indicate that teachers react to their subjective feelings, modifying the way they interact with students accordingly. In parallel with cognitive determinants of teaching, the emotional dimension thus deserves to be more deeply considered in future teaching training programs.