Increasing situational interest and physical activity by adapting game formats to students’ conative prevalences: The example of badminton in PE

Promoting physical activity (PA) in physical education (PE) relies, in part, on students’ interest in the situations proposed. The theoretical frameworks of situational interest and the conative approach converge around the idea that student engagement emerges from a specific interaction between the individual and the environment. Based on the conative approach, which makes it possible to understand expertise according to the participants’ intentions, this research extends the studies on task design in PE by studying the combined impact of an environmental variable (the game format) and the individual characteristics of students (their conative prevalence). The purpose is to study the impact of three badminton game formats, each designed based on a specific conative prevalence, on the situational interest (SI) and quantity of PA of 97 high school students. Students’ SI was measured immediately after each task, and accelerometers were used to assess PA. In particular, the results showed an increase in the SI and PA dimensions when students played in the specifically designed format appropriate to their conative prevalence. Task designs would benefit from fostering consonance between game formats and conative prevalences to increase student engagement in PE