Gender and situational motivation in physical education: the key to the development of intervention strategies

Many recent studies have reported that physical activity levels decrease during adolescence, being more pronounced among females. Therefore, based on the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2007), the aim of the current study was to analyze the influence of gender on motivational variables and cognitive and affective consequences along different Physical Education didactic units. In this study, 66 students (30 males and 36 females), aged from 15 to 17 years, (M age = 15.29, SD = 0.71), were involved. At the end of the three didactic units different situational motivational variables were measured: basic psychological needs by BPNES, self-determined motivation through the EMSI, affective consequences like enjoyment and boredom using the SSI-EF and predisposition toward the practice of content by PEPS. The results show that girls have a lower perceived competence than boys in soccer (p<.001). However, girls perceive a higher self-determined motivation, enjoyment and a greater cognitive attitude towards acrosport (p<.001). The intra-group analysis shows higher values in soccer content compared to the contents of acrosport in boys (p<.05). On the contrary, girls perceived motivational variables related to acrosport in a positive way compared to the other two contents related to cooperation-opposition sports (p<.05). Therefore, guidelines are proposed to reorient the teaching-learning process in these didactic units, by developing and implementing specific strategies to influence motivational processes based on gender.