Motivation in the Gym: A Qualitative Approach

Students’ motivation is a major concern of physical education teachers as well as it interest the others educators. Understanding of that complex variable increased during the last two decades. In the physical education domain, many studies were focused on isolated variables related to motivation and on their relationship with pupils’ behaviours. More recently, qualitative researches were conducted to enter in the class specificity and to integrate the complexity and diversity of the variables that influence students’ motivations.
Combining questionnaires interviews and observation, some researchers have confirmed that student’s motivation depends on a package of dispositional as well as individual and collective situational factors. They pointed out also the determining role of the teacher in the development of a motivated class climate. This paper will describe a couple of qualitative studies designed to analyse students’ motivation and will underline their contribution in the understanding of the phenomena related to the development of motivation by students.
Moreover, as teachers need research directly focused to their concerns, we must now provide them more support helping them to apply research data. The action research design is proposed as an appropriate approach in that way. The description of a pilot action research focused on the improvement of the students’ motivation in a secondary school level girls class will also proposed. The main results should provide the starting point of a reflective process about the strategies that teachers could plan on the gym. As it has been underlined above, the goal of the paper was to share useful information with practitioners and researchers and to encourage them to involve themselves in personal research on students’ motivation.