ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Physical Education and Pedagogy
The Relationship Between College Students’ Perceived Physical Education Environment and Student Engagement: A Latent Profile and Structural Equation Modeling Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangxi Minzu University, Nanning, China
- 2Shandong University, Jinan, China
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Background: College students' participation in physical education (PE) classes is of great significance to teaching effectiveness and students' physical and mental health. However, few studies have explored the influencing factors and mechanisms of PE class engagement. This study aims to investigate the association between college students' perceived PE environment and their PE class engagement, as well as the mediating roles of perceived teacher support and academic self-efficacy. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1,158 Chinese college students from December 1 to 31, 2024. Variables were measured using the Perceived Physical Education Environment Scale, Perceived Teacher Support Scale, Academic Self-Efficacy Scale, and Classroom Engagement Scale. Mplus 8.11 was used to perform latent profile analysis on the perceived PE environment, which classified the participants into three groups: low-perception group, medium-perception group, and high-perception group. Amos 28.0 was employed to construct a structural equation model, and SPSS 26.0 was used to test the mediating effects. Results: In the total sample and the three groups, the perceived PE environment was significantly and positively correlated with college students' PE class engagement (p < 0.01). In the medium-perception and high-perception groups of PE environment, perceived teacher support and academic self-efficacy played both individual mediating roles and a chain mediating role in the relationship between perceived PE environment and PE class engagement. However, in the low-perception group of PE environment, the mediating role of perceived teacher support was not significant, while the chain mediating role remained significant. Conclusion: This study identifies that perceived teacher support and academic self-efficacy are key mechanisms linking the perceived PE environment to students' class engagement, and this sequential mechanism is particularly important in the context of low perceived PE environment. The results of this study emphasize the practical significance of strengthening school PE environments and resources, improving teachers' guidance and support, and fostering students' academic self-efficacy for enhancing students' class engagement.
Keywords: academicself-efficacy, perceived physical education environment, Perceived teacher support, Physical Education, student engagement
Received: 07 Sep 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guan, Zhang and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Huizhuo Wu
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