Observed need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior in physical education: Do teachers' motivational orientations matter?

Objectives: The behaviors physical education (PE) teachers engage in affect a number of important student outcomes. Therefore, it is essential to study the antecedents of these teaching behaviors. Design and method: Grounded in Self-DeterminationTheory, this cross-sectional study explored the relations between PE teachers' autonomous and controlled motivational orientations and a variety of observed need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behaviors in 79 PE classes by means of regression analyses. Results: Control-oriented teachers made less use of an overall need-supportive teaching style and provided less structure during the activity in particular, while they engaged in more need-thwarting teaching behavior in general and in more controlling and cold teaching behavior in particular. Conclusion: Although autonomy-oriented teachers tended to display the opposite pattern of correlates, these associations were non-significant. As the current findings suggest that teachers' actual teaching behavior is rooted at least partly in their own dispositional motivational orientation, they may inform the design of effective continuous professional development programs and interventions aimed at enhancing teachers' need-supportive teaching. Directions for future research are discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.