Exploring the emotions and emotional antecedents of lower skilled female middle school students in differing curricular approaches to teaching physical education

Within physical education (PE), emotions play an essential role in developing student interest, achievement, engagement, and openness to learning new things (<ns0:xref ref-type="bibr" rid="R31">Simonton & Garn, 2019</ns0:xref>). Despite this, there remains a void of knowledge on how curricular approaches influence students’ emotional responses in PE. The purpose of this study was to explore the emotions and emotional antecedents of a group of lower skilled middle school female students within two differing curricular approaches to teaching PE. The curricular approaches included team sport content taught using the Sport Education (SE) model and an individual activity (mountain biking) taught using a direct model of teaching. Data collection included observing and interviewing participants at two time points during each curricular model. The findings were deductively analyzed from students’ reported emotional antecedents and emotions. Participants reported positive value appraisals in the SE frisbee unit that were enhanced via the structural features of student responsibility, team affiliation, and cooperating with others. The direct teaching of mountain biking created positive value appraisals based on the novelty and perceived utility of skills learned. The biking unit prompted excitement, whereas during SE the participants reported enjoyment augmented by role responsibilities and team affiliation. The findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge surrounding female students’ emotional experiences in PE settings.