Middle School Students' Perceptions of Caring and Its Relationships to Their Effort and Enjoyment in Physical Education

Background/Purpose: According to Noddings (1992), the ethic of caring is created through making a connection between the ‘one-caring’ and the ‘cared-for’. The previous qualitative studies found that teachers’ caring behaviors were strongly related to students’ attitude toward physical education (PE) and their engagement in PE (e.g., Cothran et al. 2003; Larson, 2006). Limited research has been conducted to quantitatively investigate how perceptions of caring relate to students’ motivational responses in PE. One of contributing factors is that there is a lack of a valid and reliable measurement of perceptions of caring in PE. Motivational constructs are context-specific.  Li et al. (in press) have suggested teachers can create a caring climate through providing differentiated instruction and feedback focusing on individual task mastery and improvement, building interpersonal rapport, and fostering positive motivated learning climates. Therefore, this study was to develop and validate a context-specific measurement of perceptions of caring in PE and further examine how middle school students’ perceptions of caring would relate to their effort and enjoyment in PE.

Method: 179 middle school students enrolled in PE in USA volunteered to participate in the study. They completed a package of surveys including demographics, 42-item perceptions of caring, and two 4-item subscales of effort and enjoyment from Intrinsic Motivation Index (McAuley et al., 1989). It took participants about 30 minutes to complete the surveys. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to validate the measurement of perceptions of caring. Pearson-product correlations were conducted to examine the relationships among perceptions of caring, effort and enjoyment.

Analysis/Results: The initial exploratory factor analysis indicated the measurement of perceptions of caring had four factors. However, the scree plot and the rotated factor patterns showed evidence supporting a single factor structure. The findings from our further factor analysis with a single factor showed that factor loadings for all items were high ranging from .49 to 90. The model accounted for 24.66% of the total variance. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for all items was .98. The correlation analysis indicated perceptions of caring were positively associated with effort, r(164)=.44, p<.0001, and enjoyment, r(164)=.67, p<.0001, in PE.

Conclusions: The results showed that the measurement of perceptions of caring in PE was valid and reliable. Participants with higher levels of perceptions of caring were likely to put more effort and exhibit more enjoyment in PE. It is suggested that teachers create a caring climate to motivate students to be engaged in PE.