Gender and corporal expression activity in physical education

Abstract

Grounded in Self-Determination Theory and Achievement Goal Theory, the objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an intervention programme on a series of motivational variables in a corporal expression teaching unit. An analysis was also conducted in terms of whether the impact of the intervention would be effective in boys and girls, given the social stereotypes inherent to this type of expression activity. A sample of 224 students, with ages varying from 12 to 14 years old (105 boys, 119 girls) participated in 10 sessions. A quasi-experimental design was carried out, dividing the total sample into two groups: control ( n = 115) and experimental ( n = 109). The intervention programme was applied in the experimental group via specific strategies based on the TARGET areas. In the experimental group, the results showed significantly higher values in perceived task-oriented climate, autonomy, competence, intrinsic motivation, identified regulation and enjoyment, as well as significantly lower values in ego-oriented climate. The intervention programme proved to be effective in boys and girls and the results were even better in boys. The importance of developing and applying specific motivational strategies in corporal expression activities should be stressed in order for this to have an impact on variables such as motivation and enjoyment in boys and girls, thus achieving more positive experiences.

Supporting Subject Justification by Educational Psychology: A Systematic Review of Achievement Goal Motivation in School Physical Education

“…The interventions were mostly conducted by regular PE teachers (n = 15) with the exception of five studies where the interventions were conducted by the researchers and one study by graduate students. In 13 studies, intervention groups were compared to control groups that received no intervention and were taught by teachers using their typical teaching style (Christodoulidis et al, 2001;Morgan and Carpenter, 2002;Curtner-Smith, 2002, 2003;Weigand and Burton, 2002;Digelidis et al, 2003;Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006;Barkoukis et al, 2008Barkoukis et al, , 2010Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016;García-González et al, 2017). Intervention and control groups were mostly examined by different teachers or researchers (Christodoulidis et al, 2001;Morgan and Carpenter, 2002;Curtner-Smith, 2002, 2003;Digelidis et al, 2003;Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006;Barkoukis et al, 2008Barkoukis et al, , 2010Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016;García-González et al, 2017).…”

“…Only in one case did the same teachers or researchers teach both intervention and control groups (Weigand and Burton, 2002). The contents of the experimental and control group lessons were either the same (Morgan and Carpenter, 2002;Weigand and Burton, 2002;Barkoukis et al, 2008Barkoukis et al, , 2010Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016;García-González et al, 2017) or different (Christodoulidis et al, 2001;Curtner-Smith, 2002, 2003;Digelidis et al, 2003;Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006). Six studies compared two or more intervention groups and had no control group (Solmon, 1996;Standage et al, 2007;Viciana et al, 2007;Erturan-lker and Demirhan, 2013;Erturan-Ilker, 2014;Logan et al, 2014).…”

“…-TARGET-based interventions designed to implement mastery-involving climates led to (a) higher levels of perceived mastery goals (Solmon, 1996;Morgan and Carpenter, 2002;Curtner-Smith, 2002, 2003;Weigand and Burton, 2002;Digelidis et al, 2003;Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006;García-González et al, 2017), partially without effect of gender (Solmon, 1996;Curtner-Smith, 2002, 2003) and partially with girls reporting more mastery goals than boys (Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006), (b) decreases in perceived performance goals (Digelidis et al, 2003;Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006), (c) higher levels of perceived mastery climates (Papaioannou and Kouli, 1999;Morgan and Carpenter, 2002;Digelidis et al, 2003;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016;García-González et al, 2017), with one study outlining positive effects for both gender and slight advantages for boys (Sevil et al, 2015), and (d) lower values on perceived performance climate (Papaioannou and Kouli, 1999;Digelidis et al, 2003;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016;García-González et al, 2017). -The studies implementing alternative mastery-climate manipulations confirmed these results regarding perceived mastery goals (Erturan-lker and Demirhan, 2013) and both perceived motivational climates (Christodoulidis et al, 2001).…”

“…-Regarding affective variables, TARGET-based interventions supportive of a PE mastery climate led to higher levels of satisfaction and enjoyment (Morgan and Carpenter, 2002;Weigand and Burton, 2002;Barkoukis et al, 2008;Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015), lessened boredom (Weigand and Burton, 2002), worry (Barkoukis et al, 2008), and somatic anxiety (Papaioannou and Kouli, 1999). Positive feedback focused on individual ability and effort affirmed these outcomes for enjoyment (Viciana et al, 2007).…”

“…Interventions structuring a mastery-involving motivational climate in PE lessons enhanced BPN such as perceived competence (Weigand and Burton, 2002;Barkoukis et al, 2008;Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016), perceived autonomy (Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015;Abós et al, 2016), and perceived relatedness (Abós et al, 2016), and showed valuable effects on different elements of self-determined motivation. Students within the mastery groups reported higher levels of self-determination with boys perceiving less self-determined motivation than girls (Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006), intrinsic motivation (Sevil et al, 2015) and identified regulation (Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014;Sevil et al, 2015), and lower levels of amotivation (Jaakkola and Liukkonen, 2006;Almolda-Tomás et al, 2014). Using a treatment combining performance and mastery climates, the intervention of Bortoli et al (2017) effectively changed self-determined motivation in the performance-mastery group, with the associated students reporting lower scores on intrinsic motivation and higher scores on amotivation after the initial performance phase.…”