Children’s motivation in primary school physical education: Generalist teacher vs sports coach.

The aim of this study was to assess how primary school children are motivated in physical education and how this is affected by the professional delivering the lesson, either a generalist teacher or outside sports coach. This will assist head teachers in deciding how best to spend the sports premium funding to be able to deliver high quality physical education. A mixed method approach was used to gain qualitative data and descriptive statistics. This was gained using questionnaires, observations and a focus group. The study found that the generalist teachers were more adept at creating higher levels of intrinsic motivation within the children compared to the sports coach. This was due to them being able to gain higher levels of enjoyment/fun, clearer and more achievable learning objectives and higher levels of teacher interaction. It is recommended that future studies investigate how much CPD generalist teachers are given to upscale their knowledge in physical education and how this can be improved