Verbal aggression is defined as the attack a person’s self-concept of the other in order to cause psychological pain as attack on character, competence, physical appearance, teasing, ridicule, threats, swearing, and profanity (Infante & Rancer, 1996) . In all types of relationships, research consistently shows that verbal aggressiveness leads to negative outcomes (Anderson & Martin, 1995; Bekiari, 2012, 2014; Bekiari & Hasanagas, 2015, 2016; Bekiari & Manoli, 2016; Bekiari & Sakellariou, 2002; Hasanagas & Bekiari, 2015; Infante, Myers, & Buerkel, 1994; Infante & Rancer, 1996; Manoli & Bekiari, 2015) . Concerning education system, it has been supported that verbal aggressiveness is a demotivating force in the classroom (Gorham & Christophel, 1992) that is negatively related to social, task and physicalattraction (Syrmpas & Bekiari, 2015) , perceptions of immediacy (Martin, Weber, & Burant, 1997; Rocca & McCroskey, 1999) , student affect toward the course content, the teacher and the recommended course behaviors (Bekiari, 2012; Myers & Knox, 1999; Wrench & Richmond, 2004) , motivation climate and satisfaction (Bekiari, 2014; Bekiari, Kokaridas, & Sakellariou, 2005, 2006; Bekiari, Perkos, & Gerodimos, 2015; Bekiari & Syrmpas, 2015; Claus, Chory, & Malachowski, 2011; Manoli & Bekiari, 2015; Myers, Edwards, Wahl, & Martin, 2007; Myers & Rocca, 2001; Schrodt, 2003) , student prosocial fair play (Hassandra, Bekiari & Sakellariou, 2007) and behavior, thinking, motivation (Bekiari & Hasanagas, 2015; Mazer & Stowe, 2016; Richmond & Gorham, 1992) . Additionally, students consider teachers verbally aggressive as less reliable than teachers avoid unconstructive communication in the classroom (Bekiari, Koustelios, & Sakellariou, 2000; Edwards & Myers, 2007; Mazer & Stowe, 2016; Schrodt, 2003) .

Moreover, students who consider that their physical education instructors are verbally aggressive present a tendency to learning loss (Bekiari & Sakellariou, 2002) adopting a similar aggressive behavior (Bekiari, Kokaridas, & Sakellariou, 2005) . In a similar context, it has been supported that instructors’ verbal aggressiveness has a negative effect on the students’ satisfaction, intrinsic motivation factors (such enjoyment and interest, effort/ importance and competence) and discipline factors related to intrinsic and caring reasons (Bekiari, Kokaridas, & Sakellariou, 2006) . Also, Bekiari (2012) found a negative relationship between perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness and students’ affective learning and satisfaction in physical education context. Furthermore, verbally aggressive coaches are likely to be considered as less credible and they probably make athletes feel less motivated (Mazer, Barnes, Grevious, & Boger, 2013) . Moreover, researchers mainly examined the relationship between athletes’ aggressiveness and the type of sport (contact or non-contact) (Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, & Cooper, 1986; Huang, Cherek, & Lane, 1999; Lemieux, McKelvie, & Stout, 2002) . Additionally, Bekiari, Digelidis and Sakellariou (2006) argued that athletes who participated in a noncontact sport perceived their coaches as emitting less verbal aggressiveness compared to athletes participating in a high-contact sport. Moreover, male volleyball players rated somatic anxiety higher and were more affected by coaches’ verbal aggressiveness than female volleyball players (Bekiari, Patsiaouras, Kokaridas, & Sakellariou, 2006) .

The concepts of goal orientation and motivation are referred generally to the way with which each person conceives his ability, defines success and prompts himself to achieve his objectives. Related researches in this field were based on the perception that the individual’s achievement targets are determined by whatever the individual considers important and desirable (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Nicholls, 1984, 1989; Duda, 1989; Duda & Nicholls, 1992) . The better comprehension of motivation however, requires that the target of behavior should be recognized. According to the theory of Nicholls (1989) , inter-personal differences exist in the way with which the people perceive their ability and define success. Thus, in environments of achievement such as the school and sports, two different objectives independent with each other are revealed, the objective of task and ego reinforcement (Duda & Nicholls, 1992; Li, Harmer et al., 1998; Nicholls, 1989; Williams & Gill, 1995) . Individuals, who are task-orientated conceive success and judge their ability on the basis of their own efforts and personal improvement. On the contrary, individuals who are ego-oriented compare themselves with others or with certain norms in order to decide how good they are. For them, success means the surpassing of others and the demonstration of a high level of abilities.

Treasure and Roberts (1995) argues that when children realize that the course of physical education is directed toward learning, they adopt targets that concern their personal improvement and demonstrate higher motivation. So, they participate more actively and have more fun, because they do not worry about their errors or they probably know that when somebody wants to learn it is natural to make mistakes. After all, they all accept that everyone can accomplish his/her goals through practice. On the contrary, in the case of children realizing that the physical education course is directed toward performance, their feeling of success depends on their perception of how good they are compared to others. As a consequence, the errors become sources of stress and the children tend to avoid their participation in physical education classes, especially when they believe that they do not demonstrate the skills to accomplish a task.

It is supported that children with high task orientation demonstrate higher and more constant in time motivation, whereas children directed toward “ego” demonstrate a low or moderate perception for their athletic abilities (Fox, Goudas, Biddle, Duda, & Armstrong, 1994; Kokaridas, Bekiari, & Sakellariou, 2005) . Research of Linnenbrink and Pintrich (2002) noted that people who are task-oriented believe that slow progress but not meeting expectations is a good opportunity to improve more, while the people who are ego-oriented thought that these problems are an indication of the low competence in relation to others. Furthermore, the instructors’ task-orien- tation associated with students’ reports that teachers actively supported the formulation of questions and seeking help (Butler & Shibaz, 2008; Shim, Sho, & Cassady, 2013) .

The achievement goal framework in terms of task-ego and approach-avoidance dimensions has also been intensively discussed, exploring the possible role of gender, athlete status and psychological parameters (Wang, Biddle, & Elliot, 2007) . Interesting profiles have also been suggested concerning goal orientation, motivation climate and relationship perceptions in young athletes (Smith, Balaguer, & Duda, 2006) . The high perceived sport ability group was featured by an engagement of task-based motivation to enjoyment. In this concept, the relevance of effort, personal development and improvement was pointed out. Task orientation and enjoyment in physical education are emphasized as salient factors inhibiting decline in physical activity (Yli-Piipari, Barkoukis, Jaakkola, & Liukkonen, 2013) . Goal orientations seem to remain independent from the course of the season, as late season task orientation appears to depend on early season and coach task orientation (McPherson, 2015).

Task-based motivation constitutes a predictor of enjoyment in physical education through perceived physical competence and intrinsic motivation. This supported previous findings (Vallerand, Brière, Blanchard, & Provencher, 1997) , involving self-determination and the achievement goal theory and excluding ego-involving climate as rather irrelevant factor (Gråstén, Jaakkola, Liukkonen, Watt, & Yli-Piipari, 2012) .

Acceptable behavior and discipline is an issue of concern for the educational community (Bekiari & Hasanagas, 2016) as learning takes place in a well-organized and peaceful atmosphere (Good & Grouws, 1977; Evertson, Anderson, Anderson, & Brophy, 1980) . Placer and Dodds (1988) argued that a well-disciplined class is one of the most important indices of successful teaching. Hellison (1985) developed strategies to help students take responsibility for their own behaviour and to increase their self-determination. It was proposed a model-an active inclusion of an undisciplined student in class through a series of steps-levels (from 0 to 4). Level 0 is characterized as a level of irresponsibility, where the student behaves antisocially and impedes the smooth functioning of both the classroom and the school. With the right assistance, the student can go to level 1, the level of participation, where the student is uninvolved in the classroom, but without harassing his classmates. Then, there is an effort to get to level 2, the level of self-control, where the student participates in class and controls himself, his feelings and reactions. Then the student passes to a higher level 3 of responsibility in which there is self-control and will participate without the direct supervision of a physical education teacher. The goal of this model is for the student to be found on level 4. There, there is care for others, the highest level of responsibility. At this level, the student not only controls himself but he actively participates without the presence of the teacher and cares, helps and offers to others Hellison (1985) . Similarly, Deci and Ryan (1985a, 1985b) in their self-determination theory identified self-responsibility and caring reasons along with external, introjected, intrinsic and no reasons as the six internally consistent factors that describe the reasons for being disciplined. Moreover, Giannoudis, Digelidis and Papaioannou (2009) who examined the perceived behavior of physical education teachers to students designated disciplined-undisciplined, in the context of perceived motivational climate. The results showed that the disciplined students, compared unruly adopted a more personal orientation in learning and personal improvement, entertained and disciplined more, they had higher perceived athletic ability and were adopting more self-determined reasons for discipline in class (internal, self-responsibility, caring reasons).

The sample of the study consisted of 283 students (124 males, 159 females) aged 10 - 14 years old (M = 12.6, SD = .94) in four cities of central Greece and Athens. All the participants were between the 5^th and 6^th grade of public primary schools and between the 1^st and 2^nd grade of public secondary schools and belonged to different socio-economic status. All students completed questionnaires referring to the instructors’ verbal aggressiveness and students’ personal orientations and discipline reasons, during their physical education lessons, in winter 2015. The completion of questionnaires lasted for 20 - 30 minutes approximately and flowed freely. The anonymity of the participants was ensured and student participation in the process was voluntary in order to obtain sincere answers. The study was conducted in accordance with the best practice rules and research ethics.

Verbal aggressiveness. The Greek version (Bekiari & Digelidis, 2015) , which was used to assess physical education teacher verbal aggressiveness, relied on the theoretical framework and the Verbal Aggressiveness Questionnaire (20 items) developed by Infante and Wigley (1986) . Preliminary examination (Bekiari & Digelidis, 2015) supported the psychometric properties of the instrument. In particular, confirmatory factor analysis indicated satisfactory fit indices (confirmatory factor analysis: .97, SRMR: .02), and internal consistency of the scale (α = .96). The scale consisted of eight items (e.g., “the teacher insults students,” “the teacher makes negative judgments of students’ ability”). Participants were asked to respond on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1: Strongly disagree to 5: Strongly agree.

Personal orientations. The Task and Ego Orientation questionnaire (Duda, 1989) , adapted in Greek population ( Papaioannou & Macdonald, 1993; Papaioannou & Theodorakis, 1996), was used to assess students’ task and ego orientation. The scale consisted of two factors (“task” and “ego” orientation) and includes a total of 13 questions. Specifically, it is consisted of 7 questions describingtask orientation (e.g. I learn a new exercise trying hard) and 6 questions describing the ego orientation (e.g. I am the only one who can do the exercise). Participants were asked to respond on a 5 point Likert scale (from 1 = never to 5 = often).

Reasons for discipline. The Greek version (Papaioannou, 1998) , which based on the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (1985a, 1985b) , was used to assess students’ perceptions of reasons for discipline. The scale consisted of 26 items and six factors: external reasons (4 questions), introjected reasons (3 questions), intrinsic rea- sons (8 questions), no reasons (3 questions), self-responsibility reasons (4 questions), and caring reasons (4 ques- tions) for being disciplined. Following the stem “When I am disciplined in PE class, it is because…” responses to the items were indicated on a 5-point Likert-type scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.

Data analysis included the use of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 21.0). Cronbach’s α reliability analysis was used to examine the internal consistency of the factors of each questionnaire. Differences in students’ perceptions about the verbal aggressiveness, personal orientations and discipline reasons respectively with the gender and class, were examined by performing a two-way MANOVA analysis. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to measure the correlation between the subscales of the questionnaires.Moreover, regression analysis was conducted in order to explore the extent to which the perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness could be a significant predictor of the students’ personal orientations and discipline reasons.The level of statistical significance was set at .05.

Finally, a students’ typology regarding parameters of verbal aggressiveness perception, orientation and discipline will be formulated using principal component analysis.