Do the benefits from autonomy-supportive PE teacher training programs endure? A one-year follow-up investigation

Objective: An earlier study (Cheon, Reeve, & Moon, 2012) showed wide-ranging benefits from a training program designed to help teachers be more autonomy-supportive toward students during PE instruction. The present study collected a follow-up data set to determine whether those earlier-observed benefits endured one year later. Design: We used an experimentally-based 3-wave longitudinal design. The experimental group consisted of 8 PE teachers from the original teacher training study and their 470 middle- and high-school students; the control group consisted of 9 matched PE teachers and their 483 students. Dependent measures included 3 manipulation checks, 3 measures of student motivation, and 6 course-specific outcomes. Method: Trained raters scored teachers' instructional behaviors at mid-semester, while students reported perceptions of their teachers' motivating style and their own course-related motivation and outcomes at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester. We tested our hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling to account for the hierarchical structure of data in which repeated measures were nested within students who were nested within teachers. Results: Compared to teachers in the control group, teachers in the experimental group were scored by raters and perceived by students as more autonomy supportive and less controlling. Their students consistently reported greater motivation and more positive outcomes than did the students of teachers in the control group. All 8 teachers in the experimental group reported being significantly more autonomy supportive than a year earlier. Conclusion: Teacher- and student-related benefits from the earlier autonomy-supportive training program endured.