Developing Social and Emotional Competence in Physical Education: An Integrative Model

Physical education is an important setting for developing students’ social and emotional competence. Yet research in physical education has largely taken a skill focused approach, giving limited attention to motivation and to the domain-specific characteristics of physical education that shape how competence is learned and sustained. Drawing on social and emotional competence scholarship and self-determination theory, we propose a domain-specific model of social and emotional competence in physical education organized around three core mechanisms. The model offers a coherent account of how social and emotional competence is generated, internalized, and sustained through an iterative process linking domain-specific characteristics of PE, need support and satisfaction, and motivational regulation and its proximal and distal outcomes. It also offers conceptual guidance for designing, implementing, and evaluating sustainable social and emotional competence focused practice in physical education.