Perceptions of the motivational climate, basic psychological needs, and life skills development in Chinese physical education students.

Introduction: Life skills can have a positive impact on young people's mental health, academic performance, and overall well-being. Physical education (PE) is viewed as a promising setting for developing students' life skills, but less is known about this in non-English speaking countries such as China. Based on the integration of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Achievement Goal Theory (AGT), we aimed to examine the relationships between students' perceptions of the teacher-initiated motivational climate (mastery- or performance-oriented) and their life skills development in PE, as well as the mediating role of their basic psychological needs (BPNs) (satisfaction or frustration). Methods: We employed a cross-sectional survey. Chinese students (N = 533, Age range = 13-18 years) completed measures assessing these variables. We fulfilled correlational and mediational analyses. Results: These findings showed that mastery climate was positively associated with needs satisfaction (r = 0.66) and eight life skills (r range = 0.44-0.61), whereas negatively associated with needs frustration (r = -0.49). Performance climate was positively related to needs frustration (r = 0.52), but negatively related to needs satisfaction (r = -0.38) and eight life skills (r range = -0.28 - -0.15). Needs satisfaction was positively (r range = 0.44-0.65), while needs frustration was negatively (r range = -0.50 - -0.34) linked with eight life skills. Furthermore, needs satisfaction positively mediated the effect of mastery climate on life skills development, but it is not found that needs frustration mediated the effect of performance climate on life skills besides goal setting, social skills, and time management. Conclusion: In conclusion, our study extended the previous literature on life skills in PE, and highlighted the roles of motivational climate and BPNs on students' life skills development. In practice, PE teachers should be encouraged to create a mastery climate as well as avoid a performance climate, to foster students' BPNs satisfaction, which in turn, promote their life skills development.

Life Skills Development Through Sport in Brazil: A Study Based on Self-Determination Theory.

This study investigated whether a large sample of youth participants' life skills development through sport was impacted by demographic variables and/or variables based on self-determination theory. Participants were 461 Brazilian youth sport (325 boys; 136 girls) aged 10-17 years (Mage = 15.12, SD = 1.44). Participants completed a self-report research survey to assess demographic variables, coach autonomy support, basic need satisfaction, and sport motivation. We analyzed data using cluster analysis, a chi-square test and multivariate analysis of variance. We found that sport participants in the high life skills development cluster were older (p = .007) and had more years of sport experience (p = .032). Compared to the low life skills development cluster, sports participants in the high life skills development cluster displayed higher scores for coach's autonomy support (p = .001), autonomy satisfaction (p = .002), competence satisfaction (p = .001), relatedness satisfaction (p = .001), and identified regulation (p = .023). In practice, these findings indicate that coaches should seek to satisfy participants' three basic psychological needs and encourage an identified regulation form of motivation when trying to promote participants' life skills development through sport.

Transformational leadership and task cohesion in sport: the mediating role of inside sacrifice.

In this cross-sectional study, we examined a mediational model whereby transformational leadership is related to task cohesion via sacrifice. Participants were 381 American (Mage = 19.87 years, SD = 1.41) Division I university athletes (188 males, 193 females) who competed in a variety of sports. Participants completed measures of coach transformational leadership, personal and teammate inside sacrifice, and task cohesion. After conducting multilevel mediation analysis, we found that both personal and teammate inside sacrifice significantly mediated the relationships between transformational leadership behaviors and task cohesion. However, there were differential patterns of these relationships for male and female athletes. Interpretation of the results highlights that coaches should endeavor to display transformational leadership behaviors as they are related to personal and teammate inside sacrifices and task cohesion.