Mapping the Spectrum of Teaching Styles for Physical Education Teachers in Italy: Insights from the Architecture of Teacher’s Behavior

Physical education in schools contributes to supporting and promoting the educational development of children: motor tasks and the organizational methods used by the teacher to present these tasks offer meaningful opportunities for disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-curricular learning. Proposing motor tasks through different teaching styles and strategies allows PE teachers to highlight different components and domains of Physical Literacy [1,2] The Spectrum of Teaching Styles model [3] describes different teachers’ behavior scenarios, moving from an instructional approach where the teacher assumes the highest degree of responsibility and decision-making in selecting activities and methods, to one in which decisions and motor responses are increasingly left to the student and the class group. The present study aims to provide an exploratory factor analysis to assess the architecture of the Italian version of the Spectrum of Teaching Styles Questionnaire in Physical Education.