From leadership research to district action: Promoting a more empowering motivational climate in physical education: a mixed-methods study on the impact of a theory-based professional development programme

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

This study examined the effects of the delivery of a school-tailored Empowering PE™ workshop and subsequent Professional Development Programme (PDP) using Community of Practice principles within one secondary school Physical Education (PE) department. Employing a mixed-methods longitudinal design, the research assessed PE teachers' understanding of motivation and motivational strategies, Senior Leadership Team perceptions of the PDP's impact, and pupils' motivation and engagement in PE. The intervention pulled from Achievement Goal Theory and Self-Determination Theory, adopting Duda's theoretically integrated conceptualization of empowering and disempowering motivational climates. Qualitative data from interviews, focus groups, and reflections revealed significant perceived benefits for teachers' understanding and implementation of motivational strategies, as well as perceived improvements in pupil engagement and motivation. Quantitative data (147 Year 9 pupils aged 13–14 years, M = 13.6, SD = 0.4; 81 boys, 64 girls) revealed no significant differences over time in perceptions of the motivational climate and their motivation to engage in PE. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of evidence supporting the benefits of creating empowering environments in physical education. The findings however highlight the complexity of implementing and assessing the effects of motivational climate interventions in PE settings and underscore the importance of sustained, theory-informed professional development for teachers. Areas for future research on interventions (and testing their effectiveness) to optimize the motivation climate in PE, pupil motivation and teacher professional development are provided.

Study methods

This study employed a longitudinal mixed-methods approach to examine the effects of a school-tailored Empowering PE™ workshop and subsequent professional development programme (PDP) using the principles of CoP within one secondary school PE department. The research design was chosen to address the study's multifaceted aims, which required both in-depth qualitative exploration and quantitative measurement of change over time.

Limitations

Transparency is critical in documenting the study's limitations, methods, and analytic procedures, this was achieved using best practice recommendations for mixed-methods research (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007). Several limitations must be acknowledged in this study, as an overview the quantitative data had a relatively small sample which limited statistical power, while the qualitative data had the potential for self-report bias. Both quantitative and qualitative data have a single-school focus which potentially affects generalizability. In more detail, the small sample size and limited quantitative data collection points restrict the generalisability of findings and the ability to detect significant changes (whether linear, quadractic) over time. Additionally, the relatively short duration of the intervention may have constrained observable effects. Focusing on a single school in one region of Wales further limits the applicability of the results; however, this focus allowed for an in-depth exploration of the context. Future research should aim to replicate this study across multiple schools and diverse settings, seeking larger samples and more frequent data collection over a longer period of time to better capture the intervention's impact. Longitudinal studies spanning multiple years could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the long-term benefits of such interventions.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Daniel Milton; Paul R. Appleton; Anna Bryant; Joan L. Duda. Promoting a more empowering motivational climate in physical education: a mixed-methods study on the impact of a theory-based professional development programme. Frontiers in Psychology (2025-06-24). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1564671

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.