Two ways teachers can develop greater harmonious passion

Abstract

Background: Passion is highly prized. The Dualistic Model of Passion provides a general roadmap for how people develop passion, at least under conditions in which they can freely schedule their daily activity, abandon activities they no longer value, and have fl exible time to invest as they see fi t. But teaching is a di ff erent, because many aspects of this activity are fi xed and pre-set by circumstances. Recognizing this unique condition of classroom PE teaching, we designed the present investigation to test the merits of two antecedents teachers can utilize to develop greater (harmonious) passion — namely, participate in an autonomy-supportive teaching workshop (Study 1) and incorporate intrinsic instructional goals into their lesson plans (Study 2). Purpose: The over-arching purpose was to investigate the potential of two malleable and personally controllable catalysts to greater harmonious teaching passion. Method: Study1usedarandomizedcontroltrial.Werandomlyassigned104 Korean PE teachers to participate (or not) in an autonomy-supportive teaching (AST) workshop. PE teachers self-reported their harmonious and obsessive passion at the beginning, middle, and end of an academic year. Study 2 used a longitudinal research design and a sample that included both PE and non-PE teachers. These 134 secondary-grade level teachers self-reported their intrinsic instructional goals, autonomy-supportive teaching, and harmonious and obsessive passion across three waves. Results: In Study 1, a repeated-measures ANCOVA showed that teachers in the experimental condition, compared to teachers in the control condition, showed a longitudinal increase in autonomy-supportive teaching and harmonious passion and a longitudinal decrease in obsessive passion. A mediation analysis con fi rmed that participants in the AST workshop experienced greater autonomy-supportive