Relationships between need-supportive teaching style, psychological need satisfaction, motivation and happiness level in secondary school physical education and sports course

Aim: In this research, it was aimed to examine the relationships between secondary school students' perceived need support from their physical education and sport course teachers and their basic psychological need satisfaction, motivation and happiness levels using structural equation modeling. Material and Method: The study was designed with the correlational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods. The sample of the research consists of 1266 public secondary school students. In the study, "Need Supportive Teaching Style Scale for Physical Education", "The Basic Psychological Needs Scale in Physical Education", "Physical Education Motivation Scale", "Physical Education Lesson Happiness Level Scale" and "Personal Information Form" were used as data collection tools. The data obtained was analyzed using SPSS 25 and SPSS Amos 22 programs. While kurtosis and skewness values were taken into account to determine whether the data were normally distributed, percentage and frequency analyses were used to show descriptive statistics of the data. In the research, structural equation modeling was used to determine the structural relationships between latent and observed variables. Results: While the path coefficient from need support to need satisfaction (β=0.66), intrinsic motivation (β=0.13), extrinsic motivation (β=0.16) and happiness (β=0.20) was determined to be positively significant, the path coefficient to amotivation (β=-0.23) was found to be negatively and statistically significant (p<.001). The coefficient of the path from need satisfaction to intrinsic motivation (β=0.61), extrinsic motivation (β=0.54) and happiness (β=0.58) was found to be positively significant. In contrast, the coefficient of the path to amotivation (β=-0.44) was found to be negative and statistically significant (p<.001). Conclusion: It was concluded that the need-supporting teaching style behaviors that students perceived from their teachers in the secondary school PES course positively predicted their basic psychological need satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and happiness levels, and negatively predicted their amotivation. Keywords: Basic Psychological Needs, Happiness, Motivation, Need Support, Physical Education, Self-Determination Theory, Structural Equation Model, Teaching Style