Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a high school sport education curriculum program on students' motivation for physical education and leisure-time physical activity. Method: Participants were 568 high school students enrolled in the required physical education programs at 2 schools, 1 taught using sport education and the 2nd using a multiactivity model of instruction. A motivational profile survey, which included student psychological need satisfaction, autonomous motives, perceived effort and enjoyment in physical education, and physical activity intention and behavior, was completed by all participants prior to and at the end of the 2-year physical education program. Results: Mixed-model analysis of variance tests revealed that the students in the sport education program reported greater increases in perceived effort and enjoyment of the program compared with the students taught within the multiactivity model. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that these positive affective outcomes were facilitated by the development of more autonomous forms of motivation. Results revealed limited support for the direct transfer of motivation from a sport education program to increases in leisure-time physical activity behavior. Conclusion: Sport education facilitates more internalized forms of student motivation in required physical education programs, but without the provision of an appropriately designed extracurricular outlet, the potential of transfer to leisure-time physical activity may not be achieved.

Background: Adolescents' decisions to engage in physical activities are influenced by the social aspects of the activity, including opportunity for affiliation, being part of a team, and the social status it offers. A curriculum and instructional model that has been shown to embed the student social system within a positive program of action is Sport Education. Preliminary evidence has suggested that Sport Education challenges social hierarchical groups and promotes more inclusive social goal involvement. Research is required to extend this work and provide a larger-scale empirical analysis of the influence of a Sport Education program on students' social goal involvement in compulsory high-school physical education and examine how these social goals impact important student affective and behavioral outcomes. Purpose: The purpose of this study was two-fold: (a) to explore the social goals of high-school physical education students after experiencing a year of Sport Education and (b) to explore the relationships these social goals had with perceptions of enjoyment and relatedness in physical education as well as participation in leisure-time exercise. Participants and setting: A total of 363 10th-grade students from the American Mid-West who had completed a year-long compulsory high-school physical education program taught using Sport Education participated in this study. Data Collection: All students participated in four 25-lesson seasons of team sports-based activity taught using the Sport Education model. Seasons taught included floor hockey, volleyball, team handball, and basketball. All seasons were taught by the same teacher. On completion of the year-long compulsory program, participants completed a questionnaire that included items pertaining to their social goals, relatedness, enjoyment of physical education, and self-reported participation in extra-curricular physical activities. Findings: Data were initially screened for outliers and distribution assumptions were examined. Internal consistency estimates were calculated for all variables except physical activity because it was a single item indicator. Descriptive statistics showed that students who had completed two full semesters of Sport Education had higher than average scores on all three social goals of affiliation, recognition, and status. Findings from the multiple regression analyses revealed the robust contribution that social recognition and social affiliation goals made to students perceived relatedness and enjoyment of physical education. Social recognition and status goals also significantly positively predicted extra-curricular exercise participation. Conclusions: This study provides evidence to suggest that prolonged exposure to the pedagogical features of Sport Education develops students' social bonds by configuring the physical education environment to promote peer social approval for participatory behaviors within the model. These social bonds strongly predicted students' perceived relatedness to peers and their enjoyment of the Sport Education experience. Importantly, these social connections to peers and social standing developed in Sport Education influenced their decision to participate in extra-curricular exercise behaviors.

The home environment that parents provide their gifted children can have a significant impact on academic motivation, yet limited research has focused on this topic. Self-determination theory, a comprehensive framework of motivation, was used in the current study to explore two research questions: (a) What attitudes do parents of gifted students have toward the academic motivation of their children? (b) What approaches do parents of gifted students use at home to develop academic motivation? Interviews with 30 parents of gifted children from across the United States revealed three higher order themes including Parents as Experts, Scaffolding, and Behavior Modification. From a self-determination theory perspective, results suggest that despite good intentions, the parents of this study were inconsistent in providing home environments that support their children’s development of internalized forms of academic motivation.

Beginning in the elementary school years, there are differences among children on how they perceive their competence in physical activity (PA). Children's competence perceptions may influence their affective reactions to PA. A crucial question is how to motivate children who hold low competence perceptions to enhance their enjoyment and PA involvement. Because parents play critical roles in children's development and socialization, social support from parents can be an important factor to complement teachers' effort to enhance children's enjoyment and PA involvement. In this research we identified the associations among children's beliefs about parental social support, perceived competence, and enjoyment in school PA. Three hundred and twenty children (9-11 years old) participated in a two-wave study. At the first wave, children completed questionnaires measuring their beliefs about parental social support, perceived competence, and enjoyment in school PA; they reported their enjoyment again 8 months later at the second wave. Both concurrent and longitudinal analyses revealed that beliefs about parental social support were important factors associated with children's enjoyment in school PA, especially among girls with low competence perceptions. Family socialization factors should be taken into consideration. The efficacy of individual and community-level strategies should be included and evaluated when designing effective intervention strategies that enhance children's PA in school.