Students’ perceptions of motivational climate and enjoyment in Finnish physical education: A latent profile analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify student clusters with homogenous profiles in perceptions of task- and ego-involving, autonomy, and social relatedness supporting motivational cli-mate in school physical education. Additionally, we investigated whether different motivational climate groups differed in their enjoyment in PE. Participants of the study were 2 594 girls and 1 803 boys, aged 14 -15 years. Students responded to question-naires assessing their perception of motivational climate and enjoyment in physical education. Latent profile analyses pro-duced a five-cluster solution labeled 1) ‘low autonomy, related-ness, task, and moderate ego climate’ group’, 2) ‘low autonomy, relatedness, and high task and ego climate, 3) ‘moderate auton-omy, relatedness, task and ego climate’ group 4) ‘high autono-my, relatedness, task, and moderate ego climate’ group, and 5) ‘high relatedness and task but moderate autonomy and ego climate’ group. Analyses of variance showed that students in clusters 4 and 5 perceived the highest level of enjoyment where-as students in cluster 1 experienced the lowest level of enjoy-ment. The results showed that the students’ perceptions of vari-ous motivational climates created differential levels of enjoy-ment in PE classes.