Teachers' Motivation to Teach Physical Education in Schools

Engaging and high quality primary physical education programs play an important role in influencing lifelong health and physical activity attitudes and behaviours of students (Cale et al., 2014; Kirk, 2005; Morgan et al., 2013; Morgan & Bourke, 2008). Consequently, it is imperative that students have positive learning experiences during physical education through their primary school years. In Australia, it is common for primary schools not to have specialist physical education teacher or to have limited access to one, as a result, generalist primary teachers are often required to deliver physical education ( O'Sullivan & Oslin, 2012; Telford et al., 2012). Inadequate training, a lack of time, limited resources, support and the distinctive nature of physical education (Morgan et al., 2013; O'Sullivan, 2006; Pickup, 2012) means that some generalist teachers often lack confidence to teach physical education. Confidence is considered to impact on motivation; low levels of confidence could result in a lack of motivation of teach physical education, which, could then influence the delivery of quality primary school physical education.