Does Content-Focused Intervention Enhance Motivation in Physical Education? A Meta-Analysis

Guided by the content specificity perspective of motivation, the purpose of the study was to identify the extent to which student motivation level is a function of content variations. Motivation intervention studies were reviewed and categorized into content-focused and motivation-only learning contexts for meta-analysis. Original and calculated effect sizes were used to determine the effects of each learning context on student motivation change. Two independent sample t-tests were conducted to compare effect sizes. The analyses showed that the content-focused learning context was effective in student motivation change (effect size g = 0.88). Within the content-focused learning context, intervention content was significantly more effective in student motivation change than the conventional curriculum (effect size g = 0.36). The findings suggest a possibility that motivation is content-specific and should be part of the curriculum.