Effect of a physical education teacher’s autonomy support on self esteem in Secondary School students: The mediating role of emotional intelligence

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyse the effect of emotional intelligence between theperception of autonomy support from physical education teachers and self esteem (positive and negative) in secondary school physical education students. The study design was observational, descriptive, and cross sectional. In total, 1069 secondary school physical education students participated (Mage = 14.55; SD = 1.54) (51.2% female; 48.8% male). The following scales were used: The Learning Climate Questionnaire adapted to Physical Education (i.e., autonomy support), the Trait Meta Mood Scale 24 (i.e., emotional attention, emotional clarity, and emotional repair), and the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (positive selfesteem, negative self esteem). A structural equation model was performed with the latent variables controlled by age, sex, and the students’ educational centre. The main results indicate that the explained variance was 37% for positive self esteem and 26% for negative self esteem. In addition, autonomy support directly predicts emotional intelligence (p < 0.05) and positive self esteem (p < 0.001). On the other hand, all indirect effects of autonomy support on self esteem across emotional intelligence were significant at p < 0.001. Finally, emotional clarity and emotional repair had a mediating effect on self esteem, and it improves the total effect of autonomy support on positive self esteem with values of = 0.14 and = 0.19, respectively, and a value of = 􀀀0.07 and = 􀀀0.06 for negative self esteem. The findings reveal the necessity to improve emotional clarity and emotional repair in secondary school students in improving positive self esteem through the perception of autonomy support from the physical education teacher.