Recommending goals and supporting needs: An intervention to help physical education teachers communicate their expectations while supporting students’ psychological needs

Objective: We expanded a traditional teacher-focused autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP Only) to design and implement a new autonomy-supportive plus intrinsic goals intervention (ASIP + Intrinsic Goals) to determine if student outcomes would be greater than those observed in a traditional ASIP. Design: Experimental, longitudinal. Method: Thirty-two experienced PE teachers (6 women, 26 men; 26 middle, 6 high school) and their 2313 students were randomly assigned into one of three conditions: an ASIP Only experimental condition, an ASIP + Intrinsic Goals experimental condition, or a no-intervention control condition. For the data collection, students reported their need satisfaction, need frustration, intrinsic goal pursuits, physical self-concept, and problematic peer relationships at the beginning, middle, and end of a semester. Results: As expected, students of teachers who participated in the ASIP Only intervention showed gains in all dependent measures, compared to students of teachers in the control condition. The new finding was that students of teachers who participated in the ASIP + Intrinsic Goals intervention showed further gains in all dependent measures, compared to students of teachers in the ASIP Only condition. Conclusion: PE teachers in the new ASIP + Intrinsic Goals intervention generated even greater student benefits than did PE teachers in the traditional ASIP Only intervention.