Trainee Teachers’ Situational Motivation and Motivational Climate towards Physical Education Lessons during COVID-19 Pandemic

This study examined the trainee teachers’ situational motivation and motivational climate towards Physical Education lessons in primary schools during COVID-19 pandemic. The participants were 160 trainee teachers comprising of 115 males and 45 female aged 21 to 26 years old (1.10±0.30) from two Institute of Teacher Education Campuses in Sarawak, Malaysia. The participants were administrated the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS: Guay, Vallerand & Blanchard, 2000) and Teacher Initiated Motivational Climate in Physical Education Questionnaire (TIMCPEQ; Papaioannou, 1998). Descriptive analysis, independent-samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA and correlation were utilized. Independent-samples t-test indicated that there were no significant differences for all variables in SIMS and TIMCPEQ on gender and age groups. The one-way ANOVA was used to compare the effect on teaching methods in SIMS and TIMCPEQ. There was a significant difference in teacher-initiated mastery orientation for the three teaching methods, F(2,157)=3.31, p=0.04. Post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test revealed that the mean score for the online learning (3.87±0.78) was significantly different than the mixed methods (4.22±0.55). However, the face-to-face learning method (3.96±0.62) did not significantly differ from the online learning and mixed methods. Furthermore, two-way ANOVA was used to examine the effect of gender and age groups in SIMS and TIMCPEQ which revealed no significant main effect of gender and age groups. Additionally, there was no statistically significant interaction between gender × age groups for all variables in SIMS and TIMCPEQ. The findings revealed statistically significant positive relationship between the variables in SIMS and TIMCPEQ ranging from very weak (0.24) to very strong (0.90). The findings revealed the necessity for positive motivational climate through adaptive educational resources, alternative teaching approaches and methods that would support and motivate the trainee teachers, educators and students in the teaching and learning of PE during this challenging time.