For many years the practice of student captains picking teams in front of the whole class has taken place. Although it is considered inappropriate it still is commonplace in today's gymnasiums. Using achievement goals theory, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two methods of team selection (ego oriented: picking teams publically vs. task oriented: confidential draft) on the situational motivation and the task/ego disposition of males in junior high school PE across two studies and four sport activities.
Method:
Male PE students from grades 7-9 (Study 1: 117 and Study 2: 116) participated in this study. The activities for Study 1 were football and soccer, and for Study 2 were basketball and volleyball. Both studies were conducted using a 2 (conditions: methods of team selection) by 2 (sports) by 4 (trials) between and within, quasi-experimental design. Four intact classes were randomly assigned to one of the two methods of team selection in each study. Students completed the Perceptions of Self-Questionnaire (POSQ) (Roberts, Treasure, & Balague, 1998), the Situational Intrinsic Motivation Scale for PE (SIMS-PE) (Guay & Vallerand, 2000) twice during each sport unit and the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS-PE) (Pelletier, Rocchi, Vallerand, Deci, & Ryan, 2013) pre and post intervention. Follow-up interviews were conducted with a purposeful selection of 14 students and analyzed using traditional qualitative methodologies.
Analysis/Results:
Results indicated that students were highly task oriented but moderately ego oriented in (a) both methods of team selection, (b) before team selection, (c) after team play, and (d) across both studies. Unexpectedly, no significance between conditions or within trials or across sport difference was noted in either study. Interview data, however, revealed pertinent themes of (a) differentiation of conception of ability, (b) empathy, (c) primacy of play and (d) social motives.
Conclusions:
While we do not recommend the practice of publically picked teams, it appears that the students' perceptions of its use differ from national recommendations. Perplexing, as it may seem, there were no apparent motivational ill-effects. Indeed students were consistently and decidedly neutral. Further students often resented private drafts as being controlling, wanting to "just play" and be with friends. Nonetheless, a minority of students suffered adverse effects of isolation and learned helplessness resulting from the practice.