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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
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