Motives of Pre-service Classroom Teachers for Sports Activity Participation

The current study aims to evaluate the pre-service classroom teachers’ motivations to participate in sports activities. The study group of the current research employing the survey model is comprised of the students attending the Department of Classroom Teacher Education in the Education Faculty of Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University. A total of 295 students; 212 females and 83 males, participated in the study on a volunteer basis. The research employed the “Sports Participation Motivation Questionnaire” developed by Oyar, Aşcı, Çelebi and Mülazimoğlu (2001) to collect data. In the analysis of the collected data, SPSS program package was used. In order to determine the between-groups difference, “ t test” and “variance analysis” were employed. In light of the findings of the current study, it can be argued that the female students’ motivation to participate in sports activities (in the sub-dimensions of team spirit, making friends, desire to compete, skill development and be active) is higher than that of the male students. Depending on the grade levels, it was found that the first year students’ motivation to participate in sports activities is more oriented to being with friends when compared to the second year students. The students stated that they spend an hour doing sports a week; thus, they feel relaxed and gain new skills. The students stating that they are not interested in any branch of sports in the university also stated that they are willing to participate in sports activities. Though there are no licensed athletes in their families, some of the students want to be active in sports activities due to their desire to compete and make friends. As a result, it can be maintained that the classroom teachers view sports participation as a need and their motivation in this respect is high.


Introduction
The concept of motivation is derived from the Latin word "movere", which means moving, encouraging and taking action. This concept is expressed with the word "motive" in English and French. To sum up, motivation is the force that drives a person towards a specific purpose (Baykal, 1978: 57). The concept of motive is one of the most important concepts that psychology has discovered. Motives lie at the basis of the behaviours of humans and animals. Motives can be either known today and easily understood or not yet clearly understood. It should be remembered that there is a motive or chain of motives behind any behaviour; no matter wherever you are and whatever you do (Cüceloğlu, 1987: 230). The meaning of the concept of motivation generally includes various internal and external causes and their functioning mechanisms that drive people to take action, determine the level of violence and energy of this action, direct the behaviour towards a specific purpose and maintain it. In other words, motivated behaviour is a goal-oriented behaviour. Action involved in a motivated behaviour occurs in a more organized, more directed manner than other actions. The vitality in the conduct of such behaviours, the energy spent while engaged in them, their resistance to change and distortion and time of their continuation indicate that these behaviours are motivated. Because of these processes, psychologists generally define motivation as a process that initiates, directs, maintains and stops a set of target-oriented behaviours (Sirkeci, 2018). Therefore, there are many definitions of motivation. The most comprehensive of these definitions is the one defining it as the effect which provides people with opportunities to achieve their pre-determined goals and enables them to behave and invest effort within the borders of their desires and wishes. The effort to be made by people on a certain issue, and their need to focus on efforts and definitions contribute to the conceptual understanding of motivation (Ünsalan and Şimşekler, 2006:29). In addition, motivation can be addressed in two important dimensions as intrinsic and extrinsic in terms of the source of the power that sets the person in motion (Ersarı and Naktiyok, 2012:83). Extrinsic motivation includes influences coming from the individual's environment. External rewards such as an employee's getting salary, earning bonuses, promotion and appreciation by his/her manager for his/her performance increase the motivation of the employee. Although the role of external factors in increasing motivation is important, without internal factors, external factors often do not provide the necessary motivation.
While intrinsic motivation is a power whose control is in the hands of the individual, extrinsic motivation is directly related to environmental factors (Ersarı and Naktiyok, 2012:83). Intrinsic motivation reveals one's needs and desires arising from internal processes. For example, a student's work and efforts to improve his / her academic grades can be considered in this context. Another important point about intrinsic motivation is that elements serving as the source of intrinsic motivation differ from person to person. Even if people are exposed to other people's impressive attitudes and discourses, they ultimately decide for themselves to serve their own goals. A person's needs and expectations are determined by a set of characteristics that influence his/her learning processes through his/her physical and mental structure that shapes his/her character. The enthusiasm of success directed towards an activity by the individual and his/her efforts directed to the desired outcomes are a reflection of intrinsic motivation. Psychologists say that people's motivation for success is shaped by their desires and needs. People go into action on the basis of their motives and needs. Therefore, the desire to succeed exhibited by people until they get the result they want is seen as a function of intrinsic motivation (Başaran, 1982).
Lifelong sports motivation is becoming an important requirement for a healthy life. Thus, sports emerge as a phenomenon having increasing effects on human life in today's consumer societies.
Sports promotes the development of individuals' physical and mental abilities and strengthens the social ties between people ( Durusoy, 2001). Sport helps to create and sustain many social values that are of great importance. Sports can achieve this function in many ways. Through sports, people can find an activity to express themselves, to get involved in a socialization process and can improve psycho-socially. In interpersonal relations, socialization has a different meaning for individual and society; socially it ensures the transfer of culture from generation to generation and the individual's obedience to the norms determined within an organized social life. In this respect, socialization is one of the main factors that make up the individual's self and personality (Küçük and Koç, 2004).
Therefore, there is a strong relationship between the areas of development in physical education which aims to increase the development of an individual's cognitive, physical, social, mental, spiritual and emotional skills through physical movement. This relationship between cognitive, affective and kinaesthetic developmental areas encourages people to get engaged in physical activities individually or in a group. This naturally supports learning, development, persistence in sports and criticising (Saçlı and Demirhan, 2008) because sports accomplish all its goals and functions through the help of the individual. In other words, all social, cultural, civil and environmental goals / achievements can only be fulfilled by educating individuals or make them sufficiently qualified and capable. The individual's quality of life depends on social and universal quality of life. The individual is the basic unit in the recovery and deterioration of psychosocial and environmental conditions (Krech, and Crutchfield, 1980). In this context, pre-service classroom teachers' gaining positive motivational behaviours towards sports is of great importance for them to create a safe sports education model for elementary school students when they start their professional career, to contribute their prospective students' developing interest in sports and to positively affect their motivation in this direction; thus, the current study is believed to be important.
In the current study, some of the socio-demographic features of the students (age, grade level, presence of a licensed athlete in their family, which members of the family have a sports licence, time allocated to sports by the students, state of participating in any sports activity in the university, which sports programs they like watching and watching any sports activity live) will be discussed in relation to their sports-oriented motivation.

Research Model
In the current study, the descriptive survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The survey model aims to elicit the opinions of participants about an issue and then to analyze them. Descriptive studies aim to determine the existing state of the research subject and to understand the problem by describing the event (Arıkan, 2011).

Study Group
The universe of the study is comprised of the students enrolled in the Education Faculty of year classroom teacher education students who wanted to participate in the current study on a volunteer basis.

Data Collection Tools
In order to collect the data of the current research, the Sports Participation Motivation Scale was used. A personal information form developed by the researchers was used to collect the participating pre-service teachers' socio-demographic information.

Data Analysis
In the analysis of the collected data, SPSS 21 program package was used. In the analysis of the data, frequencies and percentages were calculated for the socio-demographic variables. As a result of the Levene test conducted for the homogeneity of the variance, the type of the statistical test to be used was determined. In this regard, correlation, t-test and one-way variance analysis were employed (Büyüköztürk, 2002).

Findings and Discussion
The findings of the current study were analyzed according to the independent variables.
Findings about the pre-service teachers' socio-demographic features (age, grade level, presence of a licensed athlete in their family, which members of the family have a sports licence, time allocated to sports by the students, state of participating in any sports activity in the university, which sports programs they like watching and watching any sports activity live) are given in Table 1.  As can be seen in Table 2, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation varies significantly depending on gender in the sub-dimensions of team membership (t= 4,781, p<0,05), making friends (t= 2,014, p<0,05) and being active (t= 2,497, p<0,05). The significant differences are in favour of the female participants in all these sub-dimensions.
When the results of Levene test were examined, it was found that the variances of the measurements in the sub-dimensions of competitiveness and skill development are not equal; thus, non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was used. As can be seen in Table 2.1, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation varies significantly depending on gender in the sub-dimensions of competitiveness and skill development in favour of the female students (SO=157,81; SO=157,87). As can be seen in Table 3, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation varies significantly in the sub-dimension of "making friends" depending on grade level (F= 3,396; P<0.05).
Sheffe test conducted to determine the source of difference between the grade levels showed that the first year students are ̅ 1,866) significantly different from the second year students ̅ 1,583) while no such difference was found for the other grade levels; the third year students ̅ 1,645) and the fourth year students ̅ 1,761). For the other sub-dimensions, no significant difference was found. As can be seen in Table 4, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation varies significantly depending on the presence of a licensed athlete in the family in the sub-dimensions of competitiveness (t= -1,493, p<0,05), making friends (t= -2,903, p<0,05) and being active (t= -2,214, p<0,05). This difference is in favour of the students having an athlete in their families. As can be seen in  As can be seen in Table 6, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation does not vary depending on their being interested in any branch of sports in the university. As can be seen in Table 7, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation varies significantly depending on the sports program they watch in media in the sub-dimensions of physical  As can be seen in Table 8, the pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation varies significantly depending on their watching live sports events in the sub-dimensions of fun (t= -2,243, p<0,05), skill development (t= -2,278, p<0,05) and being active (t= -2,348 , p<0,05). This may show that students have fun, develop skills and become active while watching live sports events. No significant difference was found for the other sub-dimensions.

Discussion and Results
Sports have been regarded as important in every country and period and has been shaped depending on the social structure and political management of societies. The main goal of sports activities is to contribute to the physical, social, psychological, cultural and mental development of people and to create healthy generations. In addition, raising elite athletes who will contribute to the promotion of the country in the international arena is among the objectives of sports activities (TBMM Komisyon Raporu, 2005) Providing sports and sports education for students in the process of university education is within the scope of student personality services. The faculties of education that train pre-service teachers serve different teaching fields. One of these fields is the basic education department, classroom teacher training programs. Here, teachers for elementary education are trained. The current study aiming to investigate reasons behind the pre-service classroom teachers' sports participation motivation in relation to some variables is of importance in terms of determining the pre-service classroom teachers' motives for participating in sports and their training healthy future generations.
When the results of the current study are examined, it is seen that there are different variables affecting their sports participation motivation.
The pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation was found to be varying significantly depending on gender in the sub-dimensions of team membership, making friends, being active, competitiveness and skill development. This difference is in favour of the female pre-service teachers in all these sub-dimensions. Thus, it can be argued that the female pre-service teachers assign greater importance to sports than the male pre-service teachers. This is similar to the findings of other studies (Garber, 1996;Taşdemir and Tay, 2007) reporting that females are better than males in extracurricular activities and academic achievement. In addition, in scientific studies focusing on the relationship between gender and participation in recreational activities, it has been found that males are physically more active than females (Vaizoğlu, Akça, Akdağ, Akpınar, Omar, Coşkun and Güler, 2004;Haase, Steptoe, Sallis and Wardle, 2004). This finding is parallel to the finding in the current study. Şahan (2007) also found that females' level of socialization through sports is higher than that of males.
According to Özdinç (2005), women receiving sports education believe in socialization more strongly than men. These findings also seem to concur with our findings.
When the pre-service teachers' reasons for participation in sports are examined in relation to their grade levels, it can be said that "making friends" is an important reason. This seems to be more important to the first year students than the second year students. No difference was found between the third and fourth year students in this regard. This might be because of the higher need felt by the first year students for finding solution to their loneliness, for belonging to a group and for a social life during their period of getting used to the school compared to the students from other grade levels. In this connection, Filiz (2010) found that participation in sports activities is important for university students' socialization. Thus, it can be contended that socialization is a source of motivation to participate in sports. Furthermore, in the childhood and adolescence periods in which socialization is experienced more intensely, sports can serve important functions such as individuals' leading healthy and happy lives, attaining physical features they need to be efficient, acquiring skills and habits contributing to their relaxation and spiritual health, fulfilling their societal roles and establishing good relationships with others (Kaplan and Çetinkaya, 2010). In the current study, it was also found that sports activities are perceived to be important in making friends and socialization.
The students not having licensed athletes in their families seem to view sports participation more important. This might be because these students think that sports activities are important to be competitive, make friends, be more visible and active. Sports participation motivation of the students having a licensed member in their families seems to be not higher than that of the students not having a licensed athlete in their families. Moreover, in the literature, no significant correlation was found between university students' academic achievement, social adaptation and level of participation in recreational activities and the family attitude variable. Thus, it was concluded that the family attitude is not an influential factor on university students' academic achievement, social adaptation and level of participation in recreational activities (Metin, 2016). This finding is similar to the finding of the current study. "The children of the parents who are interested in sports were found to encourage their children to do sports and the opposite of this is also true. It has also been reported that with parents' increasing level of education, children are more encouraged to do sports." (Amman, 2000: 120). In addition to this, in today's conditions, the importance of people's getting engaged in life-long sports without needing the encouragement or influence of others has been emphasized. The pre-service classroom teachers participating in the current study stated that they spend time on sports for reasons such as physical fitness, team membership, and willingness to compete and to be physically fit.
Though almost all of the participating students stated that they do sports at least for one hour a week, this seems to be not enough.
The pre-service classroom teachers' sports participation motivation was found to be not varying depending on their being interested in any branch of sports in the university. The reason for some students not being involved in any branch of sports can be because of the lack of sports infrastructure and facilities. According to Greendorfer (2009), interest in sports in adolescence is directly related to engagement in sports during childhood. Thus, it can be said that people who are engaged in sports during their childhood become interested in sports in their adulthood and that adults who are interested in sports can serve as good models encouraging children to do sports. This leads to the conclusion that participation in childhood period is one of the most important reasons behind the spread of sports across the society. Moreover, according to Kondric et al. (2013) different motivational orientations support extrinsic motivation and students' participation in team sports promote their leadership skills.
In recent research, it has been determined that recreational sports activities conducted within universities have important contributions to educational and instructional activities. Therefore, entertaining activities should be supported as a part of university curriculums and should be regarded as a main component of education (Karaküçük, 1997). Thus, inculcation of this consciousness and awareness in pre-service classroom teachers during their undergraduate education is of great importance.
Though the majority of the students watch different types of sports programs in media, there are some students not watching sports programs. The pre-service classroom teachers prefer "group sports" in the sports with the content of physical fitness and thus they develop in terms of team membership, friendship, competitiveness, skill development and being active. Given that pre-service teachers will be teachers of students at the basic level of education, it can be said that their motivation towards sports programs in media can be important. Moreover, when pre-service teachers start their professional career, they should be able to direct their students towards sports and sports-related activities, which requires a high level of pedagogical competence. However, according to Karaküçük, Yenel and Yaman (1996), sports programs on TV are inadequate in terms of directing people towards branches of sports except football. Thus, Karaküçük et al. made a suggestion; Popularity of football should not be overlooked but television programs should be designed to free viewers from being passive TV watchers and to encourage them to actively participate in nature sports and many other branches of sports that can be done indoor or outdoor, individually or in a group.
It can be said that pre-service classroom teachers' watching sports events live can increase their motivation for sports participation. The pre-service teachers participating in live sports events have stronger sports participation motivation in the sub-dimensions of "fun, skill development and being active". Roychowdhury (2012) stated that participation in any type of activity for fun and pleasure is related to intrinsic motivation. The pre-service teachers' willingness to participate in live sports events can be because they feel sports as a party of daily life. Therefore, their every type of motivational orientations towards sports helps them to learn by doing and experiencing, they can become more productive and more efficient thinkers; thus, they can make better contributions to the development of our country. In this context, with the qualifications, skills and competences they attain during their undergraduate education, pre-service classroom teachers can be potential leaders in the educational institutions they will work in the future. Thus, it is of great importance to expose university students to versatile education programs that support not only their professional development but also their psycho-social development (Mansuroğlu, 2002).
As a result of the literature review, no study investigating the relationship between watching sports live and participating in sports was found. Future research can investigate this subject.
As a conclusion, it is seen that there are different variables affecting pre-service classroom teachers' sports-oriented motivation. According to , though individuals determine various reasons for participating in physical activities, their participation in their selected physical activity is affected from their specific motivation and intrinsic motivation to a great extent. In the current study, it was found that the female pre-service teachers' sports participation motivation is stronger; that "making friends" is more influential reason for the 1 st year students' sports participation; that the presence of a licensed athlete in the family does not affect their sports participation motivation; that they are motivated to participate in sports for at least an hour and that they are positively affected from watching sports events in media and live sports events. However, their individual interest in any branch of sports in the university does not affect their sports participation motivation. In general, it can be said that the pre-service classroom teachers feel sports participation as a need and their level of motivation can be increased by establishing suitable environments and encouraging them for participation. For pre-service teachers who will be teachers of our children in the future to educate our children as better, healthier, more conscious and self-confident individuals;  "Seminars" should be organized to make pre-service classroom teachers more conscious about the place and importance of life-long sports.
 During their undergraduate education, they should be directed towards at least one branch of sports within the context of sports clubs.
 University students should be encouraged to watch live sports events in their free time.
 Sports festivals should be organized at universities considering the effect of sports in the socialization process. Students should be encouraged to participate in these activities in such a way as to learn by doing and experiencing.
 Practice-centred elective courses should be incorporated into classroom teacher training curriculums to inform pre-service classroom teachers about the activities to be done by elementary school students.