Drawing from the work of Ames (1992) on classroom motivational climate, a questionnaire was developed to measure students' perceptions of achievement orientations in physical education. Exploratory factor analytic results revealed a five-factor solution with good internal consistency. Results from confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the two factors were first-order factors of a second higher-order factor, Learning, and the remaining three factors were subfactors of a second higher-order factor, Performance. Further evidence of construct validity was shown in that students' intrinsic motivation and positive attitudes toward the lesson were positively related to the learning-oriented scales and unrelated to performance-oriented scales. Finally, the questionnaire discriminated classes differing in motivational climate. The results are discussed in terms of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire.

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Motivational climate is inherently a group-level construct so that longitudinal, multilevel designs are needed to evaluate its effects on subsequent outcomes. Based on a large sample of physical education classes (2,786 students, 200 classes, 67 teachers), we evaluated the effects of classroom motivational climate (task-involving and ego-involving) and individual goal orientations (task and ego) on individual students’ outcomes (intrinsic motivation, attitudes, physical self-concept, and exercise intentions) collected early (T1) and late (T2) in the school year. Using a multilevel approach, we found significant class-average differences in motivational climate at T1 that had positive effects on T2 outcomes after controlling T1 outcomes. Although there was no support for a “compatibility hypothesis” (e.g., that task oriented students were more benefited by task-involving motivation climates), the stability of goal orientations was undermined by incompatible climates.

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