Speaker
Description
Motivational climate in physical education (PE) refers to the motivational environment shaped by teachers or peers that affects students’ engagement, perceived competence, and goal orientation. While studies have shown that empowering motivational climates support basic psychological needs and intrinsic motivation, limited research has investigated their relationship with students’ self-talk in PE settings. This study examined how empowering and disempowering motivational climates, as well as basic psychological needs, predict positive and negative self-talk among senior high school students. A total of 400 Filipino students (M = 17.1, SD = 1.03) from public and private schools completed validated self-reported measures: the Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire-PE, the Basic Psychological Needs in PE Scale, and the Automatic Self-Talk Questionnaire-PE. Correlational analyses showed that positive self-talk was positively associated with empowering motivational climate, controlling coaching, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. However, negative self-talk was positively related to disempowering motivational climates and negatively associated with task-involving, autonomy-supportive, and socially supportive environments, as well as with unmet psychological needs. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that competence need satisfaction was the strongest predictor of positive self-talk, while controlling coaching predicted negative self-talk. Competence and relatedness needs emerged as negative predictors of negative self-talk. These findings highlight the importance of fostering a task-involving, autonomy-supportive, and socially inclusive motivational environment that supports students’ psychological needs and promotes adaptive self-talk, contributing to better engagement, emotional regulation, and well-being in PE contexts.
