Turkish Students’ Opinions about Their Perceived Motivational Climate and Effort/Persistence in Physical Education

Abstract

This study examined students’ perceived motivational climates and explored how their perceived motivational climates might affect their reported persistence/effort in physical education classes. Participants consisted of 111 8th graders and 117 11th graders attending two public schools in central Turkey. Because 8th and 11th grades in Turkey represents a critical period of schooling in which students have to begin to prepare for the national high school and university entrance examinations, these grades were preferred to be involved in this study. In this study that used the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire and Self- Reported Persistence/Effort Questionnaire, pearson-product correlations were performed to examine relationships between motivational climate and self-reported persistence and effort, simultaneous multiple regression analysis was employed to examine how motivational climates might affect student reports of their persistence/effort, and a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to examine gender and grade differences among the participants on the two perceived motivational climates. Pearson-product correlation analysis showed that task and egoinvolved climates related positively to student persistence/effort. Multiple regression analysis revealed that task and ego-oriented climates were significant positive predictors of persistence/effort. The MANOVA yielded a significant main effect for grade differences (p < .001). Follow-up univariate ANOVAs revealed that 8th graders placed significantly higher values on students’ selfreported persistence/effort. These findings indicate that the complex nature of perceived motivational climate in influencing students' persistence/effort may depend on physical education settings, grade levels, and socio-cultural norms.