MECHANISMS AND PREDICTIVE EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE ON STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION IN PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Abstract

This study explored how physical education teachers’ professional competence influences students’ participation in physical activity, as well as the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a mediation model was constructed to examine the role of students’ motivation as an important pathway through which teacher competence affects behavioral engagement. The data were drawn from an open-access educational dataset including 1,248 secondary school students between the ages of 12 and 18. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to evaluate the proposed associations. The findings showed that teachers’ professional competence had a significant positive effect on students’ participation in physical activity, both directly and indirectly. In particular, higher levels of teacher competence were associated with stronger student motivation, which subsequently promoted greater involvement in physical activity. In addition, the mediation results demonstrated that motivation served as a partial mediator in the association between teacher competence and students’ participation. These results underscore the important role of teachers’ professional competence in fostering students’ engagement in physical activity and provide empirical evidence for the motivational mechanisms involved. By combining a competence-oriented perspective with a motivational framework, this study enriches the existing literature and offers practical insights for the improvement of physical education teaching.