Exploring (de-)motivating teaching profiles from a fine-grained directiveness approach: differences in students' need-based experiences

The aim was to examine how structuring and controlling approaches (high directiveness), and autonomy-supportive and chaotic approaches (low directiveness) were combined and related to students’ needs in physical education. In a sample of 1124 secondary school students, this cross-sectional study conducted two sets of profile analyses, respectively for high and low directiveness, were conducted. The latent profile analyses (LPA) revealed four high-directiveness profiles, with “very high structure-very high control” being the most adaptive and “low structure–low control” the most maladaptive in terms of need-based experiences. Four low directiveness profiles were identified, with “very high autonomy support-very low chaos” being the most adaptive and “low autonomy support-moderate chaos” the most maladaptive.