Motivational Climate, Psychological Responses, and

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JOURNAL OF SPORT & EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY, 1995,17,294-311. O 1995 ... Sport Sciences at the Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium. M. Weiss is ... ical studies in the physical achievement domain (e.g., Brustad, 1988; Brustad & ..... one item had a low item-total correlation and squared multiple ~orrelation.~.
JOURNAL OF SPORT & EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY, 1995,17,294-311 O 1995 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.

Motivational Climate, Psychological Responses, and Motor Skill Development in Children's Sport: A Field-Based Intervention Study Marc Theeboom and Paul De Knop

Maureen R. Weiss

Free University of Brussels, Belgium

University of Oregon

Recent research in educational psychology suggests that provision of a mastery motivational climate will maximize enjoyment, perceived competence, and intrinsic motivation in children (Arnes, 1992a, 1992b, 1992~).Minimal research has been conducted to test this proposition in the physical domain. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a performance versus mastery oriented teaching program on children's enjoyment, perceived competence, intrinsic motivation, and motor skill development. Children (N = 119) 8 to 12 years of age were randomly assigned to one of the two programs for 3 weeks during an organized sports program. Results revealed that children in the mastery oriented group reported significantly higher levels of enjoyment and exhibited better motor skills than those in the performance oriented group. In-depth interviews further indicated that children in the mastery program were almost unanimous in reporting high levels of perceived competence and intrinsic motivation, while those from the traditional group showed less pronounced effects. These results provide empirical evidence that a mastery motivational climate can result in more positive experiences for young athletes as they learn new skills. Key words: children, motivation, intervention

Since the 1970s, sport scientists have wanted to learn more about the motives of sport participants (Weiss & Chaumeton, 1992). While most of the early sport participation motivation studies had a descriptive and atheoretical character, in recent years a more theoretical slant has been adopted toward the study of motivation in children's sport. Two particular theories, developed in the academic domain, have attracted the attention of youth sport researchers: competence motivation theory (Harter, 1978) and achievement goal theory (Nicholls, 1984, 1989). According to Harter, individuals who perceive themselves high in competence and internal control in an achievement area will be more M. Theeboom and P. De Knop are with the Faculty of Human Movement and Sport Sciences at the Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium. M. Weiss is with the Dept. of Exercise and Movement Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.

Motor Skill Development / 295 intrinsically motivated to remain involved and exert effort, and will experience more positive affect than individuals lower on these characteristics. Harter's (1978) competencemotivation theory has been supportedby empirical studies in the physical achievement domain (e.g., Brustad, 1988; Brustad & Weiss, 1987; Weiss & Horn, 1990). Among the aspects that have been investigated within Harter's theory are antecedents and consequences of positive and negative affect in sport. For example, studies have provided support for the importance of socialization influences on children's affective outcomes in sport (Brustad, 1988, 1993; Brustad & Weiss, 1987). The construct of competence is also a key element in Nicholls' (1984, 1989) achievement goal theory. According to Nicholls, individuals are motivated to demonstrate high ability and avoid showing low ability. The essential twist in Nicholls' theory is that individuals may conceive their ability on the basis of two types of goals. For some, success is evaluated through norm-referenced means (e.g., social comparison), while others consider competence to be a consequence of self-referenced goals (e.g., personal improvement). Several researchers have labeled these goal orientations, with the norm-referenced focus termed ego (Nicholls, 1984), performance (Dweck, 1986), and ability (Ames, 1992a) goals. The self-referenced orientation has been labeled task (Nicholls, 1984), learning (Dweck, 1986), and mastery (Ames, 1992a) goals. Ames (1992a) argues that children are more likely to exhibit a positive motivational pattern when they adopt a mastery goal orientation. According to achievement goal theory, mastery oriented individuals emphasize the importance of effort in an achievement context, try hard in the face of difficult challenges, show intrinsic interest in the task at hand, and persist in the task over time (Roberts, 1992; Roberts & Treasure, 1992). In contrast, ability oriented individuals are concerned with being judged as better skilled than others or being able to succeed with little effort (Ames, 1992a). High ability oriented individuals with high perceived competence, like their mastery oriented counterparts, will choose challenging tasks as long as they have a chance of succeeding. However, high ability oriented individuals with low perceptions of competence are expected to choose tasks that are too easy, or too hard, in order to avoid optimal challenges. They are also characterized by low effort, lack of persistence, and deteriorating performance over time (Dweck, 1986). Several authors have called for research that explores ways to create a mastery motivational climate when working with youngsters, so as to maximize the benefits available in such achievement settings (Duda, 1992; Roberts, 1992; Roberts & Treasure, 1992). In the academic domain, Ames (1992a, 1992b, 1992c) was one of the first to conduct intervention research on enhancing a mastery goal orientation in the classroom. She developed an intervention plan based on six dimensions of the classroom learning environment. These dimensions were initially identified and described by Epstein (1989): task (design of learning activities), authority (location of decision-making), recognition (use of incentives), grouping (individual vs. cooperative work), evaluation (use of feedback), and time (pace of instruction). These dimensions form the acronym TARGET. Each of these TARGET areas has been translated into motivational strategies that can be implemented in the classroom. Ames (1992~)also compiled specific techniques and actual instructional practices to operationalize these principles. Her study was aimed at investigating

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the influence of instructionalpractices and teacher behaviors on elementary school children who were motivationally and academically at risk. The effects of the intervention were assessed by comparing students in the treatment (i.e., mastery oriented) and control classrooms on intrinsic motivation, self-concept of ability, attitudes, and perceived competence. Results indicated that the motivational climate in the intervention classrooms was significantly affected by changes in the teachers' strategies. By the end of the semester, scores on measures of intrinsic motivation and~attitudeswere more vositive for students in the treatment classrooms than for those in the control classrooms. The TARGET dimensions offer a strong basic conceptual structure for systematizing the various strategies recommended by youth sport researchers. In general, the task, grouping, and time dimensions can be regarded as elements of instructional organization, while the authority, recognition, and evaluation dimensions can be considered examples of teacher behaviors toward students. Although these dimensions refer to the academic learning environment, they can apply to the youth sport "classroom" because, as argued by Ames (1992b), sport and academic settings share many structural features. Both environments are characterized by adult-defined authority and reward structures. Also, they are both based on ability grouping, normative and social comparisons, and public individual performance. One difference between them is that children can drop out of sport. Another difference is that children's performance in the athletic domain is more visible and vulnerable to the evaluations of significant others. Research investigating the motivational effects of a mastery oriented approach has not been extended to a youth sport setting (Roberts, 1992; Roberts & Treasure, 1992). However, two empirical studies have recently examined correlates of a mastery motivational climate in the sport setting. Seifriz, Duda, and Chi (1992) developed a sport-specific measure of perceived motivational climate and investigated its relationship to intrinsic motivation and beliefs about the causes of success in sport. Results revealed a significant positive relationship between perceptions of a mastery oriented climate with enjoyment and intrinsic motivation. Walling, Duda, and Chi (1993) provided evidence of construct and predictive validity of Seifriz et al.'s measure of motivationalclimate. Among other things, results indicated that perceptions of a mastery climate were associated with greater perceived effort, higher levels of enjoyment, and greater team satisfaction. In contrast, perceptions of a performance climate were positively associated with greater worry and less team satisfaction. Duda (1992) has recommended that studies should implement and test the practical implicationsof achievement goal theory in real-life sport settings. Based on the assumption that a mastery motivational climate will maximize enjoyment, perceived competence, and intrinsic motivation in children, we attempted in the present study to construct a youth sport teaching program that took into account the motivational strategies implied from contemporary theory and research. In order to compare performance and mastery oriented instructional strategies, such as in Ames' (1992b) study, the sport of wushu from the Chinese martial arts was selected as the target activity. Wushu is considered the basis of most Asian martial arts. It comprises a variety of defensive techniques that are performed either unarmed or with weapons. Thus, based on previous theory and empirical research, the purpose of this study was to compare the effects of a traditional (e.g., performance oriented)

Motor Skill Development / 297 and mastery oriented wushu teaching program on participants' psychological responses and motor skill development. It was hypothesized that students in the mastery program, compared to those in the traditional program, would experience greater enjoyment, higher perceived physical competence, and higher levels of intrinsic motivation (i.e., challenge, curiosity, mastery). Because no information was available on the influence of a mastery oriented teaching program on motor skill development, no hypothesis was forwarded for this aspect of the program.

Method Participants and Design Participants originally included 102 boys and 67 girls in a 6-week university sponsored summer sports program. The program provided children with instruction in a variety of team (baseball, basketball, soccer) and individual (swimming, wrestling, martial arts, track and field ) sports daily or every other day. Thus the program offered a unique opportunity to study the research questions in a realworld setting. That is, all children were expected to participate in martial arts and the other sports as part of the normal sports program routine; for the present study, two types of instructional programs were adopted for the martial arts classes. It was decided that children missing 3 or more days of class would be excluded from all analyses. Thus the final sample size consisted of 119participants (73 boys, 46 girls) who ranged in age from 8 to 12 years (M = 9.7, SD = 1.2) and in grade level from 2nd to 5th grades. Within each grade level, participants were randomly assigned to the mastery (n = 51; 35 boys, 16 girls) or traditional (n = 68; 38 boys, 30 girls) wushu teaching programs.' During the first 3 weeks of the program the mastery group received instruction in wushu; from the 4th week onward this group went on to wrestling while the traditional group, which had followed wrestling from the beginning of the camp, was then introduced to the wushu instructional program. Measures were administered before and after the intervention phase of the study. The independent variable was the teaching program (mastery, traditional). The dependent variables included levels of self-reported enjoyment, perceived physical competence, intrinsic motivation, and motor skill development. As wushu is fairly unknown in the West, it was expected that none of the children had had any experience with it. Therefore the preintervention measures referred to sport in general while the postintervention measures were worded specific to the sport of wushu.

Teaching Programs Similar to Ames' research in the classroom (1992b), we implemented a three-step procedure for examining the effects of motivational climate on children's motivation and motor development. The first step was identifying general strategies that were consistent with mastery and performance oriented climates along the six dimensions of TARGET. Second, each dimension was operationalized in terms of different teaching strategies and behaviors in order to facilitate implementation. Finally, a monitoring or record-keeping system served as a

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manipulation check on the teacher's actual strategies and behaviors. These manipulation checks consisted of videotaped teaching sessions that were assessed by independent raters, and daily self-reports by the teacher himself to ensure that the intended and actual behaviors were as closely matched as possible. The first step was to identify strategies and behaviors consistent with the dimensions of TARGET for both programs. Although the same wushu techniques (armed and unarmed) were instructed in both teaching programs, both methods differed along the TARGET dimensions (see Table 1). In short, the traditional method emphasized the use of basic drills for practice, the authoritative role of the teacher, individual exercises, and recognition and evaluation focused on performance outcome. The mastery method employed more variety in exercises, shared decision-making between teacher and students, included partner or smallgroup exercises, and focused on effort and improvernenL2 For example, instruction in one of the basic wushu techniques of the forward leg kick can be used to illuminate program differences. While the traditional program offered children a limited number of analytical and repetitious drills (e.g., individually performed upward leg swings), the mastery program provided a variety of partner and group exercises (e.g., kicks against a ball, the instructor's hand, or as part of a game). These elements represented variations in the task and grouping dimensions of TARGET. Because most activities in the mastery program were organized as partner or small-group exercises, they allowed flexible allocation of time, in contrast to the simultaneously executed group exercises in the traditional program (i.e., the time dimension). Different strategies and expressions were also used in the recognition and evaluation aspects of each program. For example, in the traditional program a Table 1 Comparison Between the Mastery and Traditional Teaching Programs Dimension

Mastery program

Traditional program

Task

Basic movements Challenge & variety Immediate use of equipment

Basic drills Limited no. of exercises Use of equipment (weapons after 1 yr of practice) Analytical techniques No participant involvement

Authority

Recognition Grouping Evaluation Tie

Complete but short exercises Creation or suggestion of techniques, exercises, & combinations Effort & improvement Partner exercises; group performances Self-evaluation;emphasis on perceived competence Developmental skill progressions

Performance outcome Partner exercises after 4 to 6 yrs of practice Performance outcome Extensive skill progressions

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correctly executed leg kick resulted in praise from the instructor and public recognition (e.g., "Very good! Everybody, look at her"); an incorrect execution resulted in an evaluative response plus corrective instruction (e.g., "No, this is not good! You must keep your legs straight during the kick"). In contrast, in the mastery program a correctly performed kick was praised individually, and information was provided (e.g., "Good work! It's important that you keep your legs straight"). After an incorrectly performed kick, encouragement and corrective instruction for improvement were given (e.g., "Nice try! And if you can, keep your legs straight next time. It will work even better"). It was not a matter of individual versus group recognition with the two methods but rather one of private versus public recognition of individual performances. In a performance oriented climate the recognition is public, thereby stressing social comparison. In a mastery climate the recognition is mostly individually based, thereby emphasizing individual progress and improvement. Opportunities for children to be involved in the decision-making process (authority dimension) were also available in the mastery program. For example, children were encouraged to suggest other combinations of techniques and new exercises using the specific wushu skills. In the traditional program, children only followed the decisions made by the teacher.

Measures Enjoyment. Level of enjoyment was measured through adaptation of two questions from the sport enjoyment study by Scanlan, Simons, Carpenter, Schmidt, and Keeler (1993): "Do you enjoy playing sport"/"Did you enjoy practicing wushu?" and "Do you have fun playing sports?"/"Did you have fun practicing wushu?" A 5-point Likert scale was used, ranging from 1 = not at all to 5 = very much. Perceived Competence. The athletic subscale of Harter's (1985) SelfPerception Profile for Children was used (preintervention)or adapted (postintervention) to assess children's sense of competence in the physical domain and wushu, respectively. It employs a structured alternative format whereby children are first asked to indicate which of two children they are more like (e.g., "Some kids are good at all kinds of sports but Other kids don't feel that they are very good when it comes to sports"), and then to decide whether the chosen statement is "sort of " or "really true" for them. Scores for each item vary from 1 (low) to 4 (high perceived competence). Validity and reliability of this subscale have been demonstrated by several studies in the physical domain (see Weiss & Chaumeton, 1992). Intrinsic Motivation. Weiss, Bredemeier, and Shewchuk's (1985) Motivational Orientation in Sport scale was adapted from Harter's (1981) Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Orientation in the Classroom scale. This measure includes five subscales: (a) challenge (preference for optimally challenging skills vs. easy skills); (b) curiosity (curiosity or interest in skills vs. pleasing the teacher); (c) mastery (independent mastery vs. dependency on the teacher); (d) judgment (independent judgment vs. reliance on the teacher); and (e) criteria (preference for internal vs. external criteria for judging one's competence). Several studies have documented validity and reliability for this motivation measure (Brustad, 1988; Weiss, Bredemeier, & Shewchuk, 1986; Weiss & Horn, 1990).

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To assess level of intrinsic motivation among participants in this study, sport-specific modifications of the first three subscales (challenge, curiosity, mastery) were used to create four items each. These subscales are considered to be indexes of intrinsic/extrinsic mastery motivation (Harter, 1981; Weiss et al., 1985; Weiss & Horn, 1990). The scoring format of these subscales is identical to the perceived competence measure. Scores range from 1 (extrinsic orientation) to 4 (intrinsic orientation). Interviews. In-depth interviews were aimed at getting additional information on children's self-perception and motivational responses. To increase the chance that children would speak freely, we selected children from both programs on the basis of their response to an open-ended question on the postintervention questionnaire: "We would like to know anything else you have to say about the wushu class this summer. Please write as much as you want down here." All children who were asked to participate in the interviews readily agreed to do so. Because the perceived competence and intrinsic motivation variables were operationalized by the level of agreement with what kind of person they were, children were asked to indicate how they decided to agree on particular statements (e.g., "What makes you think you are this kind of kid?"). Although Harter (1985) has encouraged the use of interviews as a follow-up to self-reported measures of perceived competence, few studies have done so. Furthermore, through these interviews more information was obtained as to the reasons for liking or disliking the program, as well as children's experiences with particular elements of that program (e.g., "Did you like wushu class?" "Why did you likeldislike wushu class?" "What did you liketdislike most in wushu class?"). Motor Skill Development. The study's primary purpose was to determine the effect of motivational climate on children's self-perceptions, enjoyment, and motivation, However, in a learning environment it is dso essential to assess motor skill development as inferred through performance. Indeed, one of the primary goals of a sport skills program in a real-world setting is teaching children to improve their skills. A program that creates a motivational teaching climate but does not evaluate whether children are really learning the skills would have limited practical value. However, we did not emphasize performance per se but rather the actual skill improvement associated with learning a new sport. Level of wushu skill was operationalized through performance of the forward jump kick. Each child executed the same technique at least three times and performances were videotaped to facilitate subsequent scoring. To reduce any impact of videotaping on each child's children were habituated to the presence of the small video camcorder for at least one entire session before actual recording took place. Also, by videotaping the entire session, including warm-up, the children were not aware of the evaluation of their jump-kick performances. Wushu skill level was measured using a 5-point rating scale from 1 =fail to 5 = excellent. The evaluation was based on five criteria: fluencv of takeoff run, height of the jump, quality of leg movement, balanced landing, and intensity during execution. The rating scale was valid in that it was based on the official scoring method for wushu competition. Four wushu experts agreed on the appropriateness of these criteria, thereby establishing content validity. The videotaped performances, which were shown in a varied order, were later rated by two independent wushu experts who were blind to the purposes of the study.

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Procedure The study was conducted under the auspices of a field-based sports program directed by the third author. All parents were informed of the nature of the study via letter and signed an informed consent form. At the beginning of the program, all children signed an assent form and completed the first questionnaire regarding their level of sport enjoyment, perceived sport competence, and intrinsic interest in sport. During the ensuing 3 weeks both groups received daily instruction in wushu; each session lasted about 40 minutes. After the last session the children completed the wushu-specific (postintervention) questionnaire, which took no longer than 20 minutes to complete. Eight children (4 boys, 4 girls) from each group (mastew, traditional) and all grade levels were interviewed shortly after their last session. The interviews lasted about 30 minutes and were conducted in a quiet room immediately after sports camp or at the child's home within 1 week after the last session. All children were asked the same questions. However, in order to keep the interviews as informal and inviting as possible, the sequence of the questions, exact wording, and type of follow-up probes varied. Children were told that the interviews were part of the study in which they had participated. The interviewer, the principal investigator, told them he was interested in learning more about their experiences during wushu classes. They were encouraged to be as honest as possible if they had bad experiences, as this would help the instructor improve his teaching abilities. To further encourage truthfulness and to reduce the chances of answers being based on social desirability, children were told there were no right or wrong answers. Moreover, as the interviewer knew the children through his observations during class, he could anticipate tendencies toward social desirability regarding children's answers on liking or disliking the program. The interviewer tried to create a friendly atmosphere by starting with more general questions such as sport experiences or previous martial arts practice. All interviews were audiotaped. To prevent instructor characteristics from becoming a confound, the investigator served as the instructor for both groups. Other comparative research regarding instruction methods in Asian martial arts have used similar designs (Caine, 1989; Murray, 1981; Trulson, 1986; Weinberg, Seabourne, & Jackson, 1981). Two manipulation checks were conducted to facilitate and assess the instructor's adherence to the teaching protocol: (a) an observation of videotaped teaching behavior by five independent observers, and (b) a daily self-report on his own teaching behavior. In addition to these manipulation checks, sessions were organized so that the instructor could finish one program before starting with the other. In this way he could fully concentrate on one method at a time, increasing the likelihood of consistent behavior.

Data Analysis Preintervention differences between groups were examined through a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with group as the independent variable and sport general enjoyment, perceived competence, and intrinsic motivation (challenge, curiosity, mastery) as the dependent variables. The effect of the programs was also examined through a MANOVA with the postintervention

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wushu-specificquestionnaireassessments serving as dependent variables. Ratings of wushu skill for both groups were compared using an ANOVA. Because the interviews sought more information on a number of items, we decided to use a deductive approach to content analyze these items. Such an approach uses a predetermined set of themes or categories to organize the quotes, as opposed to an inductive approach that allows themes and categories to emerge from the quotes. The following themes were used: opinions of wushu class, perceived wushu competence, and intrinsic motivation in wushu. The focus of this analysis was on any differences between mastery and traditional groups with regard to these themes.

Results Scale Reliabilities The correlation between the two enjoyment items was high, r = .74 for preintervention and .92 for postintervention assessments. Therefore these items were averaged to form composite measures of pre- and postenjoyment. Coefficient alpha (a) was used to assess internal reliability of the perceived competence and intrinsic motivation measures. At preintervention, challenge ( a = .75) and mastery ( a = .74) subscales exceeded the acceptable .70 criterion (Nunnally, 1978); however, the curiosity subscale ( a = .56) was found to be unreliable and was excluded from the preintervention MANOVA. The perceived competence subscale initially recorded an a of .62. However, one item had a low item-total correlation and squared multiple ~orrelation.~ Removing this item resulted in an a of .68. Although this value falls slightly below the recommended standard of .70 for acceptable reliability, we included perceived competence in subsequent analyses because of its theoretical significance to the study. The postintervention measures achieved the following reliability estimates: challenge ( a = .69), curiosity ( a = .70), mastery ( a = .80), and perceived competence ( a = .73 with the same item removed). Challenge motivation was included in the postintervention analysis for the same reason as the preintervention perceived competence measure.

Group Comparisons: Preintervention A MANOVA was conducted to ensure nonsignificant differences between the randomly assigned groups on the variables of interest at the outset. Correlations among dependent variables ranged from r = .O1 to .55, indicatingthat multicollinearity (i.e., r 2 .70) was not a concern. Challenge motivation showed a moderate relationship with both enjoyment (r = .47) and perceived competence (r = .55), while enjoyment and perceived competence were correlated to a slightly lower degree (r = .39). The MANOVA was nonsignificant, Wilks' lambda = .94, F(5, 113) = 1.48, p < .21. These findings confirmed that both groups could be considad equal on the dependent variables prior to the intervention. Means and standard deviations for all variables by group can be seen in Table 2.

Motor Skill Development / 303 Table 2 Preintervention Group Means on Enjoyment, Perceived Competence, and Intrinsic Motivation

Variable Enjoyment Perceived competence Challenge motivation Mastery motivation

Mastery (n = 5 1) M SD 4.77 3.11 3.33 2.57

0.42 0.56 0.58 0.68

Traditional (n = 68) M

SD

4.87 3.12 3.34 2.80

0.34 0.54 0.62 0.74

Table 3 Postintervention Group Means on Enjoyment, Perceived Competence, and Intrinsic Motivation

Variable Enjoyment Perceived competence Challenge motivation Mastery motivation Curiosity motivation

Mastery (n = 51) M SD 4.83 2.95 3.26 2.68 3.58

0.36 0.52 0.48 0.67 0.47

Traditional (n = 68) M

SD

4.40 2.89 3.17 2.70 3.38

0.90 0.53 0.59 0.79 0.66

Group Comparisons: Postintervention Correlations among the five dependent variables ranged from r = .07 to .67. Curiosity motivation was highly correlated with enjoyment (r = .67) and moderately correlated with challenge motivation (r = .42). Challenge motivation showed correlations similar to preintervention with enjoyment (r = .38) and perceived competence (r = .53). Enjoyment and perceived competence correlated lower (r = .28) than at preintervention. The MANOVA was nonsignificant, Wilks' lambda = .91, F(5, 113) = 2.14, p < .066. Because the group main effect showed a trend toward significance, univariate F values and associated discriminant coefficients were examined. However, to protect against Type I errors we adopted a more stringent p < .01. These analyses revealed that children in the mastery group reported significantly higher enjoyment levels than those in the traditional group, F(l, 117) = 10.71, p < .001 (discriminant coefficient = 1.13). The effect size was .48, indicating a moderately strong finding with regard to enjoyment differences (Thomas, Salazar, & Landers, 1991). That is, children in the mastery group scored, on average, half a standard deviation higher than children in the traditional group. Means and standard deviations for all variables can be seen in Table 3.

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Motor Skill Development Interrater reliability was calculated using the intraclass correlation coefficient (R; Thomas & Nelson, 1990). The R of -83 indicated good reliability between the two independent raters for the wushu forward jump kick performance. The ANOVA examining group differences on motor skill was significant, F(1, 111) = 11.35, p < .002. Children in the mastery group (M = 3.50, SD = .57) scored higher on the wushu skill than did those in the traditional group (M = 3.10, SD = .80). The effect size was SO, indicating a moderately strong effect of the intervention on motor skill development. That is, children in the mastery group averaged half a standard deviation higher in motor skill performance rating than children in the traditional group.

Manipulation Checks Teaching Behavior Observations. Five independent observers were asked to rate the instructor's behavior to determine whether it was in accordance with the program being taught (i.e., mastery, traditional). The observation protocol focused on specific behavioral aspects in which both programs could be distinguished, such as the content of feedback ("Are children recognized for their effort or for their perj%rmance?"). The level of children's involvement in the instructional process was answered by the question, "Are there opportunities for children to become involved in the learning exercises?" The provision of time flexibility to complete the exercises was assessed by the question, "Is there a time flexibility for children to complete their exercises?" These items were directly associated with the behavior related TARGET dimensions of recognition1 evaluation, authority, and time. Reliability among the observers, calculated as percent agreement, resulted in a mean of 88.6% agreement among raters. Results of total behavioral frequencies for recognition of effort and performance revealed that the instructor had indeed emphasized effort recognition during the mastery sessions (62.5%) and performance recognition during the traditional program (85.7%). With regard to time flexibility, 87.5% of the observations of the mastery program noted that there was indeed enough time for children to complete the exercises at their own pace, while only 28.6% of the observations in the traditional group indicated such a time allotment. Agreement was unanimous in terms of opportunities for children's involvement in the instructional process, with a 100%rating of involvement in the mastery group and a 100% rating of no involvement in the traditional group. The protocol also included a question as to the primary purpose of the teaching style: "What is the primary purpose of the instructor's teaching behavior?" The four possible responses were (a) learning to do the task as accurately as possible within a short period of time, (b) learning the techniques but also having fun, (c) only having fun, and (d) none of the above. The purpose of the teaching style in the traditional program was almost unanimously (85.7%) described as "learning to do the task as accurately as possible within a short period of time," while the mastery program (87.5%) was characterized as "learning the techniques but also having fun." These results suggest that the instructor adhered well to the intended behaviors required for each group.

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Daily Self-Report. While the video observation involved a limited number of sessions, the self-report analysis data on teaching behavior collected after each class during the experimental phase resulted in 88 reports. These data enabled a more longitudinal analysis of the teaching behavior as well as a constant control for the instructor's adherence to predetermined guidelines. Specifically, the instructor immediately assessed his teaching behaviors on seven items following each lesson: (a) Did you recognize children for their effort? (b) Did you recognize children for their improvement? (c) Did you recognize children for their good performance? (d) Did the children get enough time to complete their exercise at their own pace? (e) How well did you involve the children (e.g., by asking questions)? (f) How positive or negative an experience for the children was this session? (g) How positive or negative an experience for you was this session? Responses to these questions were answered on 5-point scales from 1 = not at all to 5 = very positive. The analysis of these data also showed an overall consistency with regard to the teacher's intended behavior in each teaching group. While a greater emphasis on recognition of effort, improvement, time flexibility, and involvement of children was reported during the mastery program, the lessons in the traditional program were characterized by more recognition of performance, limited time flexibility, and limited involvement for children.

Interview Analysis As indicated earlier, the predetermined themes of the interview revolved around opinions of wushu class, perceived competence, and intrinsic motivation in wushu. Opinions of Wushu Class. Children's general opinion of wushu class did not differ between groups. All had positive responses toward wushu instruction. In general, children in the mastery group were very positive about the program: "It is a lot of fun to practice." "It was fun, learning lots of kicks and punches." The positive reactions of children in the traditional group were less pronounced: "It interests me." "It's pretty good." "I don't think I like to take classes all the time but it's fun." Both groups had similar reasons for liking the class, such as learning new skills, working hard, and having fun. Almost all children considered practicing with weapons to be the most enjoyable aspect of wushu class. Because the repetitive practice of the basic exercises is one of the most important characteristics of the traditional program, children from this group were explicitly asked about these exercises. Both positive and negative opinions were offered. Some children said they liked it and added that, because of the constant rehearsal, they could improve. Other children did not like it: "What I saw was that most of the kids would get bored." "If we did something different, that would be better." "I didn't like that because it was getting boring." Despite the differences in rehearsal of skills, all children indicated they had learned enough, not too little or too much. Perceived Wushu Competence. Most children from the mastery group believed they could learn new wushu skills pretty fast: "If you gave us a new kick or a new punch, such as off the springboard. After a few tries, and after watching you do it, I could get it down. Maybe not perfect. You know, in sport

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some things are not always easy, but these basic moves were easier. So I did get some of them down." "Some other sports, it takes me a long time, but basically it didn't take me a long time in wushu." Children in the traditional group seemed less convinced about their ability to learn new wushu skills immediately: "I don't think I would be good at it right away." These children also reported more frequent difficulties with specific techniques they had learned: "About half of the things were kind of hard." Intrinsic Motivation in Wushu. The interview data revealed that most children demonstrated a high level of intrinsic motivation to learn wushu. This finding was based on the fact that both groups of children indicated that they preferred the challenge of trying out new skills by themselves before asking the instructor for help: "It's like a puzzle. Unless you haven't even tried the puzzle, you don't just look at it and say, 'I need some help'." Interestingly, children who said they immediately ask the instructor for help when they get stuck on a skill seemed to have different reasons according to the program they had followed. Children from the traditional group did not seem confident about learning the skills without the instructor's help: "I don't think I can do it by myself." Children from the mastery group who indicated reliance on the instructor for help said they do so because they want to learn the skills immediately without mistakes: "If you learned it wrong, it is really hard to get it going in the right way." Most children in both groups preferred to learn difficult skills because they are more challenging, while easy skills are boring: "I want to do the more challenging ones, so it keeps your interest peaked and you keep wanting to do it, because if you keep doing the easy ones then it might be boring." "It is just more fun if you work." Finally, all children in the mastery group said they practiced wushu skills because they were interested in learning them. In the traditional group, this curiosity for wushu skills was less enthusiastic. Some children from this group indicated that their interest to learn depended on the kind of exercise they were doing.

Discussion This study examined the effect of motivational climate on children's psychological and motor development through a comparison of mastery and traditional (i.e., performance oriented) teaching programs in the Chinese martial arts. Results partially supported the hypotheses and revealed that a number of instructional strategies can have a major influence on children's enjoyment and skill development. Although the quantitative data did not provide evidence that the mastery program resulted in higher levels of perceived competence and intrinsic motivation, the interview data did provide some support for these predictions.

Sport Enjoyment The results of the present study revealed that participants in the mastery program enjoyed the sessions significantly more than those in the traditional group. These findings are consistent with previous research on enjoyment in youth sport. For example, studies have revealed the importance of intrinsic

Motor Skill Development / 307 factors such as feelings of competence, development of skills, testing of ability, excitement, and challenge, as well as extrinsic factors such as positive adult reactions and experienced levels of enjoyment (Brustad, 1988, 1993; ScanIan & Lewthwaite, 1986, 1988; Wankel & Kreisel, 1985). Specifically, the interview data revealed that children were especially attracted to the sport of wushu because of practicing with weapons. The fact that both groups were introduced to weapons shows that the mere introduction of a new activity in the program is not enough for enjoying the program. The way in which the weapons practice was organized appeared to be the most important factor. While the traditional program focused on individual drills, the mastery program emphasized partner techniques and free sparring exercises. These kinds of exercises were described as challenging and exciting, and provided children with opportunities to test their abilities. The results of the present study are consistent with the published findings on the importance of a number of intrinsic sources of sport enjoyment and of positive teacher reactions (e.g., appropriate feedback and recognition), which were part of the style of the mastery program.

Perceived Competence No significant differences were found between teaching programs for perceived competence. A possible explanation might be that the experiment was not long enough to enable the participants to feel competent in wushu. The interview data revealed that, although most of the children regarded at least half of the skills as "not easy," all but one of the children from the mastery group were convinced they could learn new wushu skills pretty fast. In contrast, children from the traditional group indicated that it took some time for them to learn the skills. A longer intervention period might have resulted in the mastery group's learning all the techniques, as they perceived they could, and as a result feeling more competent in comparison to participants in the traditional group, who felt they needed more time. Another plausible explanation for the nonsignificant group differences is that the salient sources of perceived competence information for this age group (i.e., 8 to 12 yrs) may not have been available during this intervention study. According to research on developmental differences in sources of perceived competence (Weiss & Ebbeck, in press), children of this age group report greater use of parental feedback as well as peer comparison and evaluation to judge their ability in the physical domain. Because the mastery program focused on recognizing and emphasizing personal skill improvement, self-comparison, and goal achievement, all internal sources of competence information, perhaps the children in this study did not make effective use of these informational sources from which to assess their wushu competence. Future studies should more explicitly draw children's attention to these sources of information as ways in which to judge their progress in skill competence.

Intrinsic Motivation The quantitative analysis did not support the hypothesis regarding the effect of the mastery program on children's levels of intrinsic motivation. Because children were inexperienced with the sport of wushu, they may all have been interested in

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learning a new kind of activity. Second, while the introduction of weapons practice in the traditional program allowed the experiment to continue without the threat of amition, this decision may have interfered with the ability to find quantitative differences in intrinsic motivation between the two groups. The interview analysis revealed greater intrinsic motivation among mastery group participants.

Motor Skill Development No information is available on the effect of motivational climate on motor skill performance. Recently, however, some evidence has surfaced from the academic domain regarding pupils' task performance. Parker and Lepper (1992) attempted to enhance the level of intrinsic motivation in computer programming among elementary school children by situating the exercises in a fantasy context. In the treatment class, tasks were presented in the context of simple stories, such as a child being placed in the role of a pirate in search of buried treasure. The stories were accompanied by illustrations supporting the fantasy. In the control class, tasks were presented in the form of straightforward problems. Results indicated that children in the treatment class were more intrinsically motivated and that they also learned the computer commands faster and performed better. In the present study, children from the mastery group were rated higher in their level of wushu skills (e.g., forward jump kick) than those in the traditional group. Mastery group children were introduced to this technique in a more informal way, through games and partner exercises, and the exercises had a more immediate purpose since they were often linked to another goal (e.g., avoiding a fast-turning rope, trying to touch a tennis ball in the instructor's hand with one's foot). These factors may well have had a positive effect on how children in the mastery group rehearsed the exercises, which consequently could have resulted in their developing skills superior to children in the traditional group. It is also possible that the greater enjoyment observed in the mastery group may have influenced motivation, which in turn could have produced higher performance ratings.

Conclusions and Future Directions Although the results of this study might suggest that the mastery program is a more favorable alternative for teaching wushu to children, it is probably better to refer to it as a more informal and flexible way to teach basic skills in comparison to the traditional program. With the introduction of more complex technical skills at a later stage, some elements of the traditional teaching practice may become more appropriate (e.g., the use of drills, a limited number of exercises, more analytical techniques). The topic of motivation in youth sport has attracted the attention of an increasing number of researchers during the last decade, adding to the body of knowledge on how and why young people become involved in physical activity. Many researchers have made interesting recommendations on how to improve the actual practice of youth sports. However, intervention studies aimed at investigating the positive affective and motivational effects of these recommendations have largely been neglected. The present study represented a step in this direction by demonstrating that a mastery oriented climate can result in more enjoyment

Motor Skill Development / 309 for young participants as well as higher levels of motor skill performance. More research could help determine whether these findings can be generalized to similar and different sport settings. The present study analyzed the effects of all six TARGET dimensions simultaneously, but it would be interesting to investigate the influence of specific dimensions or some in combination. The task, grouping, and time dimensions all pertain to the structure of the classroom per se, while the recognition, evaluation, and authority dimensions refer to teacher behaviors. It would be interesting to know which dirnensions contribute most si@~cantly to motivational and motor performance changes. Another important direction might be examining the influence of motivational climate on at-risk children, for example those low in intrinsic motivation or low in perceived physical competence. Finally, the duration of this field experiment, 3 weeks for each group, was realistic given the structure of many summer programs for children. However, the more long-term effects of motivational climate on children's selfperceptions, motivation, and motor development merit further study from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

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Notes 'Though randomly assigned, the groups were disparate in final numbers because more children from the mastery group were absent from class for 3 or more days, usually due to being away on short trips with their parents. Moreover, with regard to gender, girls and boys in Grades 2 and 4 were randomly assigned to the two groups. However, because of small numbers of girls in the 3rd and 5th grades, all girls in these grades were assigned to the traditional group. Therefore the mastery group for these two grades included all boys. adaptation was made with the traditional group in order to complete the experiment as planned: the introduction to weapons practice. Usually, in the traditional method the participants are only introduced to the use of weapons after at least 1 year of practice. Introduction of weapons practice was done to avoid attrition, as pilot testing in a 1-week sports camp indicated that children lost their motivation to continue the martial arts class without the opportunity to use the weapons (e.g., cudgel, sword, spear). 3WhileHarter's (1985) athletic competence subscale has been suitable for assessing perceived physical competence, problems have continually emerged with the following item, which was eventually dropped in this study: "In games and sports, some kids usually watch instead of play" but "Other kids usually play rather than watch." This item has consistently achieved a low squared multiple correlation and low item-total correlation.

Acknowledgments This article represents a dissertation study completed by Marc Theeboom in partial fulfillment of the doctoral degree in physical education at the Free University of Brussels (VUB), Belgium, under the primary advisement of Paul De Knop and the copromotion of Maureen Weiss. The authors gratefully acknowledge the individuals who served as independent raters in evaluating teaching behaviors and motor skill performance in this study, and thank Tony Berlant for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.