Improvement of students’ motivation in a PE class.

An action-research project

Marc CLOES, Caroline VISEUR & Pascale MOTTER

Department of Physical Education and SportUniversity of Liège (Belgium)

Pre-Olympic Scientific CongressThessaloniki - August 2004, 8-13

Introduction

Motivation is a determining factor of numerous human

activities plays an important role in the achievement of

any student seems to progressively disappear in school

context (students and educators!) Students are motivated but their

motivation is not always oriented towards the goals determined by the school professionals

Introduction Viau (1998) identified four groups of external

factors influencing motivational dynamic

Factors related to the class

Activity, assessment, teacher’s characteristics and

behaviour, praise and punishment, class’ climate,

relationship between pupils...

Factors related to the pupil’s life

Family, friends, leisure activities...

Factors related to the school’s environment

Rules, schedules...

Factors related to the society

Values, culture,...

Introduction Many studies compare motivational

characteristics of students in a quantitative approach

Newton and Duda (1999) proposed to follow a qualitative approach to better account for the large inter-individual variability of motivation within a class

Two categories of qualitative approaches focused on students’ motivation (Cloes, 2004) Cases’ analysis Research action

Why a more applied approach? Numerous publications propose

strategies aiming to improve pupils’ motivation Books Papers in professional journals

No real research check the effectiveness of the described approaches

How to check the effectiveness of some strategies?

Action research Kurt Lewin Spiral cycle

Planning

Action

Observation

Reflection

Cloes (2003)

Goals of the study

To test the action-research design in a local context

To verify if it is possible to help a teacher to develop strategies aiming to improve students’ motivation

To determine how the teacher apply these strategies

To assess the effectiveness of the strategies

Time line of the study

2002-2003 school year

September 2002

June2003

AllStday Christmas

Carnival Easter

Preparatory phase

•Secondary level school located in the region of Liège, in a very unfavourable socio-economic context•Female teacher ( 27 years of teaching experience)•A grade 9 class (15 girls of 15 year old)

•Pupils’ intrinsic motivation (questionnaire) → 4 least motivated pupils•Class environment (video recordings + informal observation + perception of the lesson)•Interviews of the four least motivated pupils + teacher

Time line of the study

2002-2003 school year

September 2002

June2003

AllStday Christmas

Carnival Easter

Phase of problem’ s identification

Time line of the study

2002-2003 school year

September 2002

June2003

AllStday Christmas

Carnival Easter

Planning phase

•Documents presenting strategies and activities designed to improve pupils’ motivation provided to the teacher•Meeting with the teacher (synthesis of interviews + elaboration of task and content modification)

•Analysis of the teaching process (direct observation and analysis of the videotaped lessons)•Interviews (target pupils + other pupils + teacher)•Regular informal meetings•Final questionnaire of intrinsic motivation + teacher interview

Time line of the study

2002-2003 school year

September 2002

June2003

AllStday Christmas

Carnival Easter

Intervention phase

Time line of the study

2002-2003 school year

September 2002

June2003

AllStday Christmas

Carnival Easter

Phase of analysis and presentation of the results

•Analysis and processing of the data collected during the year to determine the impact of the project•Synthesis meeting organized at the end of the school year to present the main results to the teacher

Results (phase of problem’s identification)

At the beginning of the school year, the average level of motivation was reasonable

Four target pupils really less motivated than their classmates

Results (phase of problem’s identification)

Pupils were not intensively involved into the activity and the teacher did not clearly act against that behaviour

The lessons’ content was mainly technical exercises (swimming, gymnastics), drills and 6/6 matches (volleyball)

Results (planning and intervention phases)

The teacher did not use the documents provided by the researchers (... the pupils are not motivated, it’s like that! ... I have already all tried! ...)

Strategies were developed with her and she was immediately enthusiastic about their use

New organization was planned and proposed to the pupils but ...

Results (phase of results’ analysis)

Teacher and the overall class agreed for saying that the new organization was more funny than those usually proposed by the teacher Influence of the task on pupils’ motivation

(Epstein, 1989; Viau, 2000) Most of the students mentioned that if the

same activities would be repeated, they would encourage them to take part more positively to physical education lessons

Results (phase of results’ analysis)

Few positive modifications were detected in the attitude of the four target pupil Only one mentioned that she appreciated the

new tasks (S3) For two other, the problem were rather on the

requirements which they did not think to be able to achieve (S1 and S4)

The fourth’s general attitude getting to her a certain dislike towards the school system (S2)

Results (researchers’ opinion)

Despite of the modification of the content to the pupils, the teacher seemed not always able to develop a motivational climate laying on an effective intervention

“Diplomatically”, the researchers did not pointed out the pedagogical errors of the teacher

Conclusions

That action-research produced some positive effects Enthusiasm of the teacher towards new strategies Positive perception of these strategies by the whole

class ... and some disappointing findings

Lack of modification of the teaching behaviours Lack of motivation level modification in target pupils

Some reflections

Multiplication of action-researches should help the educators to enlarge their personal framework

Examples of good practices in which they could identify each variable explaining the success or the failure of an experiment should be proposed

There is a need of strategies concerning severe pupils’ disengagement

Some reflections

Practitioners need to be prepared to action research (pre-service and in-service contexts)

It is essential to create progressively confident relationships so that the practitioner accepts to solicit the researcher

Thank you for your attention

References

Cloes, M. (2003). APS. In, M. Cloes (Ed.), L’intervention dans les Activités physiques et sportives : rétro/perspectives. Actes du colloque organisé en septembre 2002 au Sart Tilman {CD rom}. Liège : Département des APS, Université de Identification de la place des chercheurs et des praticiens dans la recherche sur l’intervention dans les Liège.

Cloes, M. (2004). Motivation in the gym: A qualitative approach. Paper presented at the II International Conference for Physical Educators. Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Eptein, J. (1989). Family structures and student motivation : A developmental perspective. In, C. Ames & R. Ames (Eds.), Research on motivation in education, vol. 3 (pp. 259-295). New York: Academic Press.

Newton, M., & Duda, J.L. (1999). The interaction of motivational climate, dispositional goeal orientations, and perceived ability in predicting indices of motivation. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 30, 63-82.

Viau, R. (1998). La motivation en contexte scolaire. Bruxelles : De Boeck Université.

Viau, R. (2000). Des conditions à respecter pour susciter la motivation des élèves. Corespondance, 5 (3). Retrieved November 16, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://www.ccdmd.qc.ca/correspo/Corr5-3/Viau.html

Strategies aiming to improve pupils’ motivation Volleyball

“Intercities games”: 4 to 6 exercises are proposed as events where several teams can get points according to the quality of their activity (overall placing): “Which team will be able to establish the record of successively correct services during the next two minutes?”

Tournament: teams of 2 pupils competed with referees with adapted rules (field, number of ball contacts, actions of the pupils after the rally,...)

Analysis of the teaching process Direct observation Analysis of videotaped lessons

Event recording (FB, encouragements, pressures)

Interval assessement (voice inflections, gestures, moving and participation)

Placheck (number of pupils on task, 1/min) Intra observer reliability: 85 to 97.7%

of agreement

What’s the motivation level of the pupils? Analysis of the questionnaire

Class E 1 E 2 E 3 E 4

Att. EP (aff.)/4 2.9 2 2 3 2

Att. EP (cogn.)/4 2.7 1 2 3 1

Competence EP/4 2.5 1 1 3 2

Task orient. EP/4 2.9 1 1.8 2.7 3.6

Score /16 11 5 6.8 11.7 8.6

Att. school (aff.)/4 2.8 3 3 3 4

Att. school (cog.)/4

3.3 2 3 3 3

Att. sport (cog.)/4 2.9 1 2 2 2

... direct observation and analysis of the videotaped lessons showed that the teaching process was not really improved

VB IC 1 VB

IC 2 VB

IC 1 Nat

IC 2 Nat

Tour 1VB

Tour 2VB

N FB/min 2.2 2.3 2.5 .5 .4 1.8 .6

Gestures 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.7 1.4 1.8 1.5

Voice 2.2 2.8 2.2 2.2 2 2.1 1.9

Moving 2.1 2.3 2.1 2 1.1 2.1 2.1

Part. 2.1 2.2 2 1.7 1.9 2 1.5

Placheck 49.1 32.8 27.7 6.8 4.2 66.1 61.5