TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 16 September 2022 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 Examining the relationship OPEN ACCESS between academic stress and EDITED BY Frédéric Guay, Laval University, Canada motivation toward physical REVIEWED BY Angelica Moè, education within a semester: A University of Padua, Italy Isaías Martín-Ruiz, Universidad de Málaga, Spain two-wave study with Chinese *CORRESPONDENCE Menglu Yang secondary school students Menglu_yang@hotmail.com † Deceased Menglu Yang1*, Carme Viladrich2 and Jaume Cruz3† SPECIALTY SECTION 1 School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, This article was submitted to 2 Department of Psychobiology, Methodology and Health Science, Universitat Autònoma de Educational Psychology, Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 3 Department of Basic, Developmental and Educational Psychology, a section of the journal Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Frontiers in Psychology RECEIVED 10 June 2022 ACCEPTED 29 August 2022 PUBLISHED 16 September 2022 The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between academic CITATION stress and motivation toward physical education (PE) through a longitudinal Yang M, Viladrich C and Cruz J (2022) design with cross-lagged panel analyses. A sample of 556 Chinese secondary Examining the relationship between academic stress and motivation school students participated in the research and completed Perceived Locus toward physical education within a of Causality Scale and Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents at the semester: A two-wave study with beginning of the semester and 3 months later. The results demonstrated Chinese secondary school students. Front. Psychol. 13:965690. that academic stress factors were positively related to less self-determined doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 motivations except that worry about grades was positively related to more COPYRIGHT self-determined motivations within each time point. In addition, we found © 2022 Yang, Viladrich and Cruz. This is an open-access article distributed that academic stress negatively predicted more self-determined motivations under the terms of the Creative but positively predicted less self-determined motivations, whereas worry Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in about grades negatively predicted amotivation 3 months later. Meanwhile, other forums is permitted, provided the influence of amotivation on despondency was also found. These results the original author(s) and the copyright suggest that academic stress can obstruct students’ participation in PE owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is through an impact on self-determined motivation. Our findings also indicate cited, in accordance with accepted that self-determined students in PE will seek academic achievement as well, academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which which in turn improves students’ academic status. does not comply with these terms. KEYWORDS academic stress, adolescent, motivation, physical education, self-determination theory Introduction Academic stress, which largely comes from work overload, the amount of material to learn, and the need to achieve a high grade, becomes a critical problem during adolescence (Leung et al., 2010). In addition to the direct impact of stress on physical and mental health among adolescents, researchers also suggested the indirect impact Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 of stress on health through poor health behaviors (Michels course (Sallis et al., 2012). Therefore, participation in PE et al., 2015). Furthermore, participation in physical education has been proposed as an alternative for reducing the life (PE) has been found to be obstructed by the academic burden stress levels of adolescents. Despite the benefits of PE, the (Mowling et al., 2004; Back, 2015). Especially in Asian countries, common view that PA increases at the cost of decreased time the most important barriers to PE participation come from on principal subjects lead to a tendency of low participation a prioritized emphasis on academic achievement of principal in PE as well as a heavy academic burden (Wang, 2017). subjects, like mathematics and literature (Zhu et al., 2017). Nevertheless, several studies showed that PE and other PA Among various types of stress, academic stress may be programs did not result in negative academic outcomes, the most salient for adolescents, which is highly related to but were positively associated with academic outcomes, such competitive academic examinations, such as university entrance as test scores, grades, and reduced academic stress (e.g., examinations and high school entrance examinations (Jun Sallis et al., 2012; Back, 2015; Shen, 2017). The influence of and Choi, 2015). Consistent with the transactional model of participation in PE on academic status may exert through psychosocial stress proposed by Lazarus (1966), the level of physical and psychological fitness. Such influence may also perceived academic stress is determined not only by the number be explained by the fact that students with high motivation of academic stressors but also by how students interpret these to participate in PE will also be motivated to strive for stressors (Chua et al., 2018). Therefore, Sun et al. (2013) achievement in academic subjects (Torrijos-Niño et al., defined academic stress as subjective psychological distress from 2014). multiple aspects of academic learning, rather than a sum of In order to increase active learning time in PE, Self- stressors. The sources of academic stress can be originated Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985) has been widely from the heavy burden of homework, negative attitudes toward employed to explore students’ behavior, cognition, and affect learning, such as loss of interest and difficulties in learning, in PE. According to Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and etc (e.g., Wunsch et al., 2017). Meanwhile, the academic Deci, 2017), different forms of motivation situate along a expectations from students and significant others, like parents self-determination continuum from more self-determined to and teachers, have also been demonstrated to be important less self-determined: intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, factors of academic stress (Sun et al., 2011). Academic stress introjected regulation, external regulation, and amotivation. occurs when academic demands exceed a student’s perceived Sheldon and Elliot (1998) further proposed autonomous ability to cope with them (Wilks, 2008). As the burden of motivation which consists of more self-determined forms academic material varies within a semester, the academic stress of motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation and identified may also change over time correspondingly (Xiang et al., regulation), and controlled motivation which consists of 2019). less self-determined forms of motivation (i.e., introjected In previous studies, academic stress is associated with regulation and external regulation). Students with autonomous negative psychological consequences such as unpleasant motivation will experience positive cognitive, affective, and emotional states, depression, tearfulness, even self-harm, and behavioral consequences, such as vitality and enjoyment (e.g., suicidal feelings in some cases (e.g., Lotz and Sparfeldt, 2017; Vlachopoulos, 2012; Gråstén and Watt, 2017). On the other Soares and Woods, 2020). Besides, students with a high level side, controlled motivation and amotivation have been found of stress also presented poor academic achievement, low to be related to negative outcomes, such as boredom, low self-efficacy, and low PE participation (Moeini et al., 2008; engagement, and fear of exams (e.g., Haerens et al., 2010; Park et al., 2020). Meanwhile, some researchers suggested that Aelterman et al., 2012). academic stress may not necessarily result in negative outcomes (Sang et al., 2018; Ye et al., 2019). Students’ responses to stress Academic stress and motivation toward differ by their abilities and beliefs. Therefore, if students view physical education academic challenges as opportunities and exert effort to meet Various studies have found relationships between academic the challenges, the academic stress may result in a positive stress and academic motivation (e.g., Liu, 2015; Rubach and impact (Sang et al., 2018). Bonanati, 2021). Academic stress was found to negatively predict academic motivation, while high autonomous academic motivation led to a decrease in academic stress (Rubach Motivation toward physical education and Bonanati, 2021). However, limited research has examined such reciprocal effects of students’ stress and motivation Regular engagement in Physical activity (PA) has been across contexts (e.g., Back, 2015). As suggested by Ryan found to be related to the reduction of stress (Ki et al., and Deci (2017), students’ motivation in certain situations 2019). As an important part of school education, one main can be generalized to wider school experience. For instance, goal of PE is to provide adolescents with PA during the intrinsic motivation experienced in garden work could improve Frontiers in Psychology 02 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 TABLE 1 Model fit indices. Model χ2 df CFI TLI RMSEA 90% CI RMSEA Measurement model 4461.66 1959 0.922 0.915 0.049 [0.047, 0.050] Cross-lagged models Model 1 with autoregressive paths 107.95 56 0.972 0.953 0.049 [0.035, 0.062] Model 2 with autoregressive paths and cross-lagged effects of 84.39 41 0.976 0.947 0.052 [0.036, 0.068] academic stress on motivation Model 3 with autoregressive paths and cross-lagged effects of 83.27 41 0.977 0.948 0.051 [0.035, 0.067] motivation on academic stress Model 4 with all autoregressive and cross-lagged effects paths 59.44 26 0.982 0.935 0.057 [0.038, 0.077] df, degrees of freedom; CFI, Comparative Fit Index; TLI, Tucker–Lewis Index; RMSEA, Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation; CI, Confidence Interval. students’ motivation and experience in regular classroom PE and other school exercises for at least 1 hour every day, PE courses (Skinner et al., 2012). Since PE has been considered is not a subject of entrance examinations. Hence, considerable to be an effective method to reduce academic stress (Ki et al., emphasis on academic success and university education has 2019), the autonomous motivation toward PE, as a predictor of resulted in the negligence of PE in middle schools and even participation, may also serve as an important factor to relieve in primary schools. In a study of students from Shanghai academic stress. (Zhu et al., 2017), the academic burden was found to be Previous studies have found the positive effect of motivation the primary reason for not having sufficient PA. Those with toward PE on students’ perceived stress and academic attitudes academic burdens were less likely to meet the PA guidelines (Back, 2015; Park et al., 2020). On the other side, a study but reported longer homework time. Consequently, Chinese conducted on student-athletes found that as perceived stress adolescents showed increased physical inactivity and sedentary increased, students’ motivation for sports participation declined behavior in recent years and more than 85% of them failed to (Holden et al., 2019). In addition, factors related to testing meet the guideline of about 60 min daily PA (Mowling et al., stress, such as performance grading and test criteria, were also 2004; Lu et al., 2017; Liu et al., 2019). found to influence students’ autonomous motivation toward PE (Krijgsman et al., 2017; Haerens et al., 2019). Based on the results of these studies, we proposed a reciprocal relationship between The present study stress and motivation across contexts. In consideration of the fact that Chinese adolescents experience high academic stress and limited participation in Academic stress and physical PA, we consider that the Chinese educational context could education in China serve as an interesting context to explore how to reduce academic stress levels and promote PA participation. Using Although academic performance is a major source of data from secondary school students in Shanghai who have stress among adolescents worldwide, this phenomenon seems one of the highest academic burdens and heaviest homework to be more pronounced in Asian countries (Liu and Lu, loads, we aimed to examine how academic stress levels and self- 2012). Particularly, students from East-Asian countries, such determined motivation toward PE change over time. Because as China, tend to spend more time taking classes and of the lacking research on the relationship between stress and doing homework and perceive more academic stress than motivation across contexts, we also aimed to examine the students from Western countries do (Ye et al., 2019). Due relationship between academic stress and motivation toward to highly valued academic achievement in traditional Chinese PE to explore whether the influence of motivation-related culture, academic performance has become a concern among factors can be generalized to other contexts. Based on the Chinese adolescents and their parents as well as educators existing literature, we hypothesized that (1) both academic and administrators, which results in exam-oriented education, stress and motivation would change over time, and specifically, excessive stress, orderly school disciplinary climate, and lack of academic stress would decrease, and motivation would increase; academic motivation (Sun et al., 2013; Ye et al., 2019; Ning, (2) academic stress would relate negatively to self-determined 2020). motivation; (3) academic stress would predict a decrease in A view commonly expressed in China is that sport requires self-determined motivation toward PE, while self-determined little intellect (Jones, 1999). Although PE is recognized as a motivation toward PE would predict a reduction in academic necessary part of education with the objective of health and stress. We will test these hypotheses in turn after checking the fitness development which requires students to participate in measurement model for stress and motivation. Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 Materials and methods (e.g., “because that’s the rule.”), and 4-item subscale amotivation (e.g., “but I really don’t know why.”). Preceded by the stem “I Design participate in PE,” students were asked to respond on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly The current study applies a non-experimental longitudinal agree). See validity and reliability for the present sample in the design. We conducted two evaluations of academic stress and Section “Results.” motivation toward PE in single group of secondary school students across 3 months within the semester. Exclusion criteria for participants included the presence of cognitive deficits or Procedure significant sociocultural differences. After obtaining permission from the participating schools and ethical approval from the research ethics committee of the Participants first author’ institution, we contacted teachers and/or directors of the PE department to approach the students for participation A sample of 556 students (47.84% female) from Year 6 to in the study. We informed students and their parents of the 8 of four schools in average socio-cultural areas in Shanghai, purpose of the research, the confidential procedure, and the with a mean age of 12.55 years (SD = 0.78, range: 10–15) voluntary participation to obtain consent from both sides. With participated in the study at the beginning of the fall semester the help of school teachers, we administrated the questionnaires and 3 months later. Among them, 463 students completed the before a PE course. Once students decided to participate in questionnaires at both data collections, 34 students were absent the study voluntarily, they began responding to questionnaires, at the first data collection, and 49 students were absent at the which last between 10 and 25 min. To enable data matching second data collection. over time without the need for names, we used ID code lists. All the procedures were following the ethical standards of the institutional human research committee. Instruments Academic stress Data analysis We used Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (Sun et al., 2011), which was originally developed and administrated among We examined first the measurement model using the Chinese adolescents, to measure students’ academic stress. The weighted least squares means and variance adjusted estimator scale contains five subscales, 4-item subscale pressure from and the internal consistency of each subscale with Cronbach’s study (e.g., “I feel a lot of pressure in my daily studying”), 3-item alpha and non-linear reliability coefficients (Green and Yang, subscale workload (e.g., “I feel there is too much homework”), 2009; Appelbaum et al., 2018). We used Comparative Fit Index 3-item subscale worry about grades (e.g., “I feel that I have (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) >0.90 and Root Mean disappointed my teacher when my test/exam results are not Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA) <0.08, as criteria ideal”), 3-item subscale self-expectation (e.g., “I feel stressed indicative of an acceptable model fit for quantitative data and when I do not live up to my own standards”), and 3-item CFI and TLI >0.95 and RMSEA <0.06 as criteria indicative subscale despondency (e.g., “I am very dissatisfied with my of a good model fit (Kline, 2016). Since including all items academic grades”). Students were asked to respond on a five- and factors simultaneously in panel models requires a large point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 sample size to produce stable estimates (Kline, 2016), we used (strongly agree). See validity and reliability for the present the composite scores of factors for further analyses intended to sample in the Section “Results.” test the main hypothesis. We compared the factors between two collections with paired t-test to explore the changes in academic Motivation toward physical education stress and motivation toward PE over time and calculated We administrated the adapted Chinese version of the Pearson correlation coefficients to examine the relationship Perceived Locus of Causality Scale (Goudas et al., 1994; Yang among the factors within each time point. et al., 2019) to assess motivation toward PE. We measured three Finally, we conducted the cross-lagged panel analyses factors: autonomous motivation, formed by 4-item subscale to examine the relationship between academic stress and intrinsic motivation (e.g., “because PE is fun.”) and 3-item motivation toward PE over time, using the maximum likelihood subscale identified regulation (e.g., “because I want to learn estimator (Newsom, 2015). We tested and compared four sports skills.”), 3-item subscale controlled motivation, formed models: Model 1 with autoregressive paths between two- by introjected regulation (e.g., “because I would feel bad about time points; Model 2 with autoregressive paths and cross- myself if I didn’t.”) and 3-item subscale external regulation lagged effects of academic stress on motivation; Model 3 with Frontiers in Psychology 04 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 autoregressive paths and cross-lagged effects of motivation on 2, both the path from despondency to autonomous motivation academic stress; Model 4 with all autoregressive and cross- (β = −0.18, p = < 0.001) and the path from worry about grades lagged effects paths. In order to choose the best-fitting model, to amotivation (β = −0.09, p = 0.041) were significant. In Model we compared the models with cross-lagged effects (i.e., Model 3, only the effect of amotivation on despondency (β = 0.13, 2, Model 3, and Model 4) with the stability model with only the p = 0.016) was significant. As can be seen in Figure 1, in autoregressive paths (i.e., Model 1) through the χ2 difference the reciprocal model, worry about grades negatively predicted test. amotivation (β = −0.09, p = 0.040), and despondency negatively predicted autonomous motivation (β = −0.18, p < 0.001), while amotivation positively predicted despondency (β = 0.14, Results p = 0.010). Comparing all the models, Model 4, significantly different from the stability model (1χ2 = 48.518, 1df = 30, Missing data were infrequent (3.52% at the first collection; p = 0.017), fit best with the data. 3.22% at the second collection), which did not require special missing data treatment (Graham, 2009). The values of skewness of all items are between −1.11 and 1.15, and the values of Discussion kurtosis of all items are 2.28 and 4.03 which indicated a normal distribution in general. CFI and TLI of the measurement model In the current study, we examined the changes in academic were above 0.90 and RMSEA was lower than 0.06, which stress and motivation toward PE among Chinese students and supported the structure of the administrated scales (see the first the relationship between these variables across time. Most line in Table 1). In addition, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of all academic stress factors and controlled motivation toward PE subscales were higher than 0.7 as well as most of the non-linear decreased significantly while autonomous motivation increased internal consistency coefficients except that of despondency significantly across time. With regards to their relationship, close to 0.7, which supported the internal consistency of the we found that almost all the academic stress factors were subscales of academic stress and motivation toward PE (Hair positively related to controlled motivation and amotivation, et al., 2018). See Table 2. but only pressure from study, workload, and despondency Regarding the difference between the two data collections, were negatively related to autonomous motivation. We also pressure from study, workload, controlled motivation and found a negative prediction of despondency on autonomous amotivation decreased significantly while despondency and motivation and a positive prediction of amotivation on autonomous motivation increased significantly from the first despondency. However, worry about grades was found to be collection to the second collection (see Table 2, penultimate positively related to autonomous motivation and to negatively column). predict amotivation. Table 3 presents the correlation coefficients between Contrary to the previous findings on long-term change variables at the first time point and the second time point of motivation (Ullrich-French and Cox, 2014), we found an separately. In both data collections, we found positive increase in autonomous motivation and decreases in controlled intercorrelations among academic stress factors. With regards motivation and amotivation within the semester. According to motivation toward PE, autonomous motivation was to the Self-Determination Theory, autonomous motivation is negatively related to controlled motivation and amotivation, related to satisfaction of basic psychological needs, such as while controlled motivation and amotivation were positively autonomy and relatedness (Standage et al., 2012; Ryan and Deci, intercorrelated with each other. In respect of the relationship 2017). The increase in self-determined motivation in a short between academic stress and motivation, pressure from time may be explained by the fact that students get to know study, workload, and despondency were negatively associated their teacher and classmates which improves the fulfillment of with autonomous motivation and positively associated the relatedness needed during the semester. with controlled motivation and amotivation. Worry about Consistent with previous literature (Xiang et al., 2019), we grades was positively related to both autonomous motivation found that academic stress factors, like pressure from study and and controlled motivation but not significantly related to workload, declined within the semester. As suggested by Xiang amotivation. Self-expectation was positively correlated with et al. (2019), at the beginning of the semester, students lack time controlled motivation and amotivation but not significantly to adapt well from holiday to school lives and academic activities correlated with autonomous motivation. seem difficult to them. Therefore, as time goes on, students Table 1 also presents the fit indices of cross-lagged models tend to experience less academic stress because of knowledge between two time points. All the models fit well with the data. accumulation and good preparation. Model 1 showed high stability of academic stress and motivation A high level of stress, particularly academic stress, has toward PE across 3 months with significant standardized been found to be related to less intention to participate in autoregression coefficients ranging from 0.30 to 0.46. In Model PA and PE among adolescents (Back, 2015). Similarly, we also Frontiers in Psychology 05 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 found a negative relationship between academic stress and self- and PA, Frömel et al. (2020) also found that girls with academic determined motivation toward PE. In particular, pressure from stress presented low participation in PA during school but high study, workload, and despondency was negatively associated participation in PA after school. Thus, we suggest that some with autonomous motivation but positively associated with academic stress, such as worry about grades, may not necessarily controlled motivation and amotivation. Nevertheless, worry lead to a negative impact on motivation and/or participation about grades was positively related to both autonomous in PE. Concerning the influence of motivation toward PE on motivation and controlled motivation. In previous studies academic stress, we found that amotivation positively predicted (Sun et al., 2011, 2013), worry about grades, unlike other despondency. Previous studies have shown that participation in academic stress factors, was not found to be related to negative PE can be related to positive academic outcomes, such as less consequences, such as low efficacy and poor health condition. academic stress and higher test scores (Sallis et al., 2012; Back, Therefore, we suggest that worry about grades may function as 2015; Shen, 2017). The encountered influence of amotivation one positive source of academic stress. on academic stress implies that the impact of PE on academic Both academic stress and motivation toward PE were outcomes may function through the motivation toward PE and found to influence each other. A previous study of students academic activities (Torrijos-Niño et al., 2014). However, the from Shanghai also showed that academic burden was influence of autonomous motivation on academic stress was not perceived as the primary reason for insufficient PA and longer found significant, which suggests that autonomous motivations homework time (Zhu et al., 2017). In the current study, we may not affect directly academic stress. found despondency as a negative predictor of autonomous motivation which suggests that the impact of academic stress on participation in PE may come from the reduced self-determined Implications motivation. However, not all academic stress factors were found to be predictors of reduction of self-determined motivation, Since 2002, the Chinese Ministry of Education has especially worry about grades was found to be a negative conducted PE curriculum reform with a focus on shifting from predictor of amotivation. In a previous study on academic stress sports skills to health and fitness development (Jin, 2013). TABLE 2 Descriptive statistics and internal consistency coefficients. First collection Second collection M SD α ω M SD α ω 1M Range Pressure from study 2.84 1.03 0.85 0.83 2.63 1.11 0.91 0.89 −0.21*** 1–5 Workload 2.63 1.14 0.90 0.91 2.25 1.06 0.91 0.92 −0.37*** 1–5 Worry about grades 3.75 1.01 0.85 0.84 3.70 1.06 0.86 0.86 −0.05 1–5 Self-expectation 2.96 1.02 0.74 0.71 2.88 1.07 0.79 0.76 −0.08 1–5 Despondency 2.34 0.91 0.70 0.67 2.47 0.96 0.71 0.70 0.13** 1–5 Autonomous motivation 3.98 0.90 0.89 0.93 4.10 0.95 0.92 0.95 0.12** 1–5 Controlled motivation 2.67 0.91 0.72 0.79 2.46 0.90 0.73 0.81 −0.21*** 1–5 Amotivation 1.89 0.92 0.86 0.84 1.76 0.89 0.87 0.85 −0.13** 1–5 α = Cronbach’s alpha coefficient; ω = non-linear reliability coefficient; 1 = change from first collection to second collection. **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. TABLE 3 Correlations among academic stress and motivation toward physical education (PE) (first collection below diagonal and second collection above diagonal). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Pressure from study — 0.77*** 0.36*** 0.46*** 0.65*** −0.19*** 0.40*** 0.41*** 2. Workload 0.71*** — 0.16*** 0.31*** 0.54*** −0.28*** 0.37*** 0.41*** 3. Worry about grades 0.22*** 0.06 — 0.49*** 0.30*** 0.16*** 0.31*** 0.08 4. Self-expectation 0.37*** 0.20*** 0.38*** — 0.46*** −0.01 0.27*** 0.19*** 5. Despondency 0.48*** 0.35*** 0.10* 0.31*** — −0.25*** 0.36*** 0.48*** 6. Autonomous motivation −0.15** −0.20*** 0.22*** 0.08 −0.15** — −0.12** −0.51*** 7. Controlled motivation 0.40*** 0.37*** 0.25*** 0.25*** 0.18*** −0.06 — 0.45*** 8. Amotivation 0.32*** 0.32*** −0.09 0.06 0.22*** −0.54*** 0.39*** — *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Frontiers in Psychology 06 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 FIGURE 1 Cross-lagged model of the relationship between academic stress and motivation toward physical education (PE). Dashed lines depict the negative regression. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Nevertheless, Chinese adolescents reported increasing physical administrating interventions to reduce academic stress or to inactivity and failed to meet the PA guidelines. Prioritized promote PA participation, we recommend taking both principal academic achievement over PA in Chinese culture has been subjects related to academic factors and PE course into account one of the barriers to participation in PE (Jones, 1999; Zhu simultaneously, such as academic burden and quality of PE et al., 2017). The influence of academic stress on motivation which have been found to be influential factors of academic toward PE found in our study implies that high academic stress stress and PA participation (Zhu et al., 2017; Zhang et al., levels may reduce participation in PE through decreased self- 2019). determined motivation toward PE. On the other side, academic In China, PE is less emphasized at school due to the idea stress has drawn more and more attention from parents, that sports require little intellect and PE is not part of the educators, and government, especially in China and other Asian important entrance examination. A similar view is held by most countries (Liu and Lu, 2012). To alleviate stress, PE has been parents and educators worldwide that the increasing time on PA believed to be an effective method (Ki et al., 2019). However, will be at the expense of decreased time on principal subjects increasing PE sessions does not necessarily guarantee benefits (Wang, 2017). On the contrary, studies have suggested that PE (Resaland et al., 2016). As the traditional PE curriculum in and other PA programs would benefit academic performance China is designed to promote endurance, strength, flexibility (e.g., Sallis et al., 2012; Back, 2015; Shen, 2017). Torrijos- exercises, and circuit training for cardiovascular health, students Niño et al. (2014) suggest that the positive impact of PE have little choice in selecting sports during PE courses. The on the academic achievement of principal subjects may also encountered influence of amotivation on academic stress exert indirectly through motivation. In the current study, suggests that for students who lack motivation toward PE, being academic stress was found to negatively predict motivation forced to participate in PE may increase rather than decrease toward PE, similar to the negative influence of academic stress academic stress. Taking these together, when designing and on academic motivation found in previous studies (Liu, 2015; Frontiers in Psychology 07 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 Rubach and Bonanati, 2021). Meanwhile, students who lack not all academic stress factors have a negative impact on motivation toward PE also reported despondency in principal students’ participation in PE. To examine the possible positive subject learning. The negative impact of academic stress and influence of academic stress on students’ wellbeing, it would motivation toward PE on each other provides evidence that the be useful to include consequent variables, such as intention to impact of motivation-related factors in a certain situation, such participate in PE, PA level during PE, and positive and negative as PE, can be generalized to other academic subjects (Ryan and affect, which are highly correlated with academic stress and Deci, 2017). motivation toward PE (Torrijos-Niño et al., 2014). In addition, Although various studies have found a negative influence as both academic stress and motivation would be influenced by of academic stress on students’ psychological wellbeing and parenting style and teaching styles (e.g., Van Der Kaap-Deeder academic performance, academic stress may not always lead to et al., 2019; Moè et al., 2020), we also recommend including negative consequences. As suggested by some researchers (Sang variables such as autonomy support and psychological control et al., 2018; You, 2018; Ye et al., 2019), when students view to further explore the relationship between academic stress and such stress as a challenging opportunity, the academic stress is motivation. more likely to result in a positive impact (Sang et al., 2018). Scales et al. (2020) also found that the challenge provided by teachers (high expectations) as an element of developmental Conclusion relationships had a positive influence on students’ academic motivation and sense of belonging. The negative prediction Similar to previous studies on the relationship between of worry about grades on amotivation toward PE confirms academic stress and academic motivation, we found a reciprocal the positive influence of academic stress. When academic relationship between academic stress and motivation toward stress comes from high expectations which students may PE. The current study provides evidence to support that perceive as a challenge rather threat, the positive impact of the influence of motivation-related factors can be generalized academic stress can also be generalized to other contexts. to other contexts, as suggested by Ryan and Deci (2017). Accordingly, providing challenges conforming to students’ Specifically, the influences of despondency and self-determined abilities may be an effective method to enhance students’ motivation on each other suggest that academic stress may motivation for both principal academic subjects and PE hinder participation in PE through reduction of self-determined courses. motivation while lack of motivation toward PE may lead to an increase of academic stress through the generalized impact of motivation in PE to other educational situations in the school Limitations and future research context. Therefore, whether to relieve students’ academic stress or to promote PA participation, educators and administrators The most important limitation of this study is that we should take academic factors related to principal subjects and conducted the study in specific Chinese culture, so we need PE courses together. Finally, the positive relationship between to be cautious when generalizing and interpreting some of worry about grades and self-determined motivation toward the results to other cultures. Although the idea that the PE suggests that providing students adequate challenge as a increasing time on PE will lead to decreased time on principal source of academic stress may enhance their self-determined subjects and poor academic performance is held by parents motivation not only in a principal subject-related academic and educators worldwide (Wang, 2017), the over-emphasis on context but also in a PE context. academic performance in Chinese culture may make students more sensitive to academic stress and its influence. We suggest conducting similar research in other cultures to examine whether such a reciprocal relationship between academic stress Data availability statement and motivation toward PE is consistent across different cultures. The datasets presented in this study can be found in Second, we only measured academic stress and motivation online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories toward PE within a semester. Previous studies have shown that and accession number(s) can be found below: https://osf.io/ both academic stress and motivation vary across semesters and dtmnk/?view_only=7b80b0b6fbe349e8aa1f7b0ca149a0fd. grades in different ways (Ullrich-French and Cox, 2014; Barker et al., 2018). Future research will need to measure both variables within and across semesters to investigate how academic stress and motivation toward PE affect each other in both the short Ethics statement term and long term. Finally, the encountered positive relationship between The studies involving human participants were reviewed worry about grades and autonomous motivation reveals that and approved by East China Normal University. Written Frontiers in Psychology 08 frontiersin.org Yang et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.965690 informed consent to participate in this study was provided by Conflict of interest the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could Author contributions be construed as a potential conflict of interest. MY contributed to the data collection. MY and CV analyzed the data and approved the final manuscript. All authors conceived the hypothesis of this study and drafted and/or Publisher’s note revised the manuscript. All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated Funding organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. 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