94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1430769
Students' perceptions of need-supportive teaching, basic psychological need satisfaction, and life skills development in Chinese physical education
Provisionally accepted- 1School of Physical Education and Sport Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 2School of Physical Education and Sport Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
- 3Department of Physical Education, The Open University of Fujian, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Physical education (PE) is viewed as an environment conducive to students' life skills development. However, less is known about the processes by which young people develop their life skills in PE. This is particularly the case in non-English speaking countries such as China. Based on self-determination theory, the present study aimed to investigate the relationships between students' perceptions of teacher need-support, basic psychological need satisfaction and their life skills development in PE.The present study employed a cross-sectional design. Participants were 727 Chinese students (Mage = 16.93) attending 29 classes from 7 different schools in China.They completed measures assessing these variables. The preliminary analyses used descriptive statistics to determine participants' scores on each variable and correlations to assess the relationship between variables. Mediation analyses were conducted to evaluate the tested models.Results: In all analyses, structure, autonomy support, involvement, and total teacher need-support was positively correlated with total psychological need-satisfaction, which, in turn, positively correlated with students' life skills development in PE. The mediation analyses showed that total psychological need-satisfaction was a key mediator between teacher need-support and students' life skills development in PE.This study thus provides actionable insights into the role that teacher need-support plays in satisfying students' basic psychological needs and, in turn, developing students' life skills in PE. The findings highlight that teachers should exhibit need-support (e.g., provide students with constructive, clear, and self-oriented
Keywords: teacher need-support, Basic psychological need satisfaction, life skills development, self-determination theory, PE teaching
Received: 10 May 2024; Accepted: 21 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cheng, Ji and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liping Cheng, School of Physical Education and Sport Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350117, Fujian Province, China
Xiangbo Ji, School of Physical Education and Sport Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.