Physical Education Students Can Create a More Supportive Learning Environment for Themselves: Reciprocal Relations Between Agentic Engagement and Peer Support.
Abstract
Engagement-students' active involvement in learning activities-enables achievement and is enabled by interpersonal support. In a physical education class, one's teacher and one's classmates potentially provide such interpersonal support. The present study focused specifically on agentic engagement (the student's constructive input into the learning environment) and on peer support (one's classmates' effort encouragement, improvement focus, and relatedness support) to propose and test a reciprocal effects model in which agentic engagement and peer support positively facilitated each other over time. In a preregistered, three-wave, within-person survey study, 740 South Korean secondary students (41.6% females; Mage = 15.4) from 24 physical education classes completed the same questionnaire at the beginning, middle, and end of an 18-week semester. We tested for reciprocal effects, using a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model. Peer-directed agentic engagement prospectively predicted subsequent perceived supportive peer climate (B = 0.32, SE = 0.10, t = 3.29, p = .001), and perceived supportive peer climate prospectively predicted subsequent peer-directed agentic engagement (B = 0.20, SE = 0.06, t = 3.51, p < .001). These findings suggest a mutually facilitative process in physical education in which a student's agentic contributions into their peer interactions and their perceptions of peer support during those interactions prospectively, reciprocally, and positively facilitate each other over time.