The Structural Model of Students’ Amotivation in Physical Education Activities

The aim of the study was to develop a model of students’ amotivation in physical education activities based on the four dimensional structure of amotivation. In this descriptive-correlational study, 381 high school students of Bookan were selected through cluster random sampling as the subjects of the study, and they filled out the questionnaire of amotivation inventory–physical education (AI-PE) of Shen et.al (2010) with reliability (α=0.81). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used for data analysis. The results showed that there are positive and significant relationships between unappealing characteristics of activity, and insufficient values of activity with deficient effort (r= 0.560, p=0.002; r=0.622, p=0.001), and there is positive and significant relationship between deficient effort with deficient ability beliefs (r= 0.668, p=0.000). Standardized path coefficients in fitted model showed that unappealing characteristics of activity, and insufficient values of activity influenced deficient effort, respectively (0.27; 0.61). Also, deficient effort affected the belief in deficient ability (0.89). Students may become amotivated in physical education activities because of various reasons. So, multidimensional nature of amotivation in physical education must be identified and considered during teaching and learning.