Search results

Educational psychologists have, over the last half century or so, directed their attention to the study of student motivation. While teachers have not entirely been ignored, there has been little inquiry into teacher motivation that has been systematic and theory-driven. The concentration on students has tended to overlook the centrality of teacher motivations as integral to teachers’ goals, beliefs, perceptions, aspirations, and behaviours, and thereby to student motivations and learning. It is perhaps not surprising that those motivation researchers who have developed robust theories in relation to student learning in educational contexts would begin to turn their attention to teachers, to see whether those same theories might have explanatory power with regard to teacher motivations. Teacher self-efficacy research (e.g., Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007; Woolfolk Hoy & Burke-Spero, 2005) has made important contributions to the study of teachers. Motivation researchers are now beginning to turn their attention to other aspects of the complex of motivational factors which demand greater attention and exploration. Robust theoretical frameworks already exist in the motivation literature, which can be applied to guide future research in this area. There has recently been a surge of interest, or what we have elsewhere described as a “Zeitgeist” (Watt & Richardson, 2008a) in applying well-developed theories in motivation research, to the domain of teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to explore/investigate various issues of teachers ' motivation in public sector Higher Educational Institutions of Pakistan.

This is an exploratory research where surveys have been conducted in the well known public sector Universities of Pakistan; primary data have been collected through questionnaire and in depth face to face interviews.

Findings of the research have shown that although compensation packages and financial incentives are important factors for employees in the competitive market environment of the higher education sector but some other factors like job design and working environment, performance management system, and training and development are also significant. The research has also explored various issues being faced by teachers in public sector HEIs related to the above mentioned factors.

This study can play a vital role in compelling the higher education authorities to ponder over the motivational issues of teachers in universities. The research can prove to be an effectual document for other worldwide universities where teachers are facing similar issues.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between educational leadership and teacher's motivation. The research described here was anchored in the convergence of two fundamental theories of leadership and motivation: the full range model of leadership and self‐determination theory. The central hypotheses were that transformational leadership would predict autonomous motivation among teachers, whereas transactional leadership would predict controlled motivation. The authors further predicted that autonomous motivation would mediate the relations between transformational leadership and teachers' burnout and that controlled motivation would mediate the relations between transactional leadership and burnout.

Questionnaires assessing the variables of interest were completed by 122 Israeli teachers.

Results, based on structure equation modeling, supported the hypotheses, suggesting that leadership styles among school principals play a significant role in teachers' motivation and well‐being.

The school's environment in Western society is characterized by many impositions and pressures that affect teachers' well‐being, as reflected in their quality and intensity of motivation, affect, and burnout. Thus, the present research findings suggest that if the power in educational systems is delegated to school principals, and if the latter are encouraged and trained to be autonomy supportive toward their educational staff, then these steps may potentially facilitate teachers' autonomous motivation, satisfaction, and well‐being.

Few studies have examined the relationship between various styles of leadership and different types of motivation among followers. The present novel study has the potential to fill this gap by empirically studying the relationship between educational leadership and teachers' motivation.

The purpose of this study was to critically analyse the factors that affect the motivation of public primary school teachers and also to investigate if there is any relationship between teacher motivation and job satisfaction in Mauritius.

Simple random sampling method was used to collect data from 250 primary teachers who are members of the Government Teachers Union (GTU). Chi‐square test was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings have shown similar results to the integrated cognitive‐motivational model for the study of teachers’ professional motivation by Jesus and Lens. However, some results seem to contradict the literature review. On the whole, Mauritian primary teachers have a good motivational level.

Owing to time and financial constraints, a larger sample size could not be taken to carry out the survey.

There is a need for educational leaders to take immediate actions pertaining to the improvement of teachers’ motivation.

Despite the fact that many research studies have been carried out on job satisfaction and motivation of teachers worldwide, there is hardly any study that has focused solely on the concept of motivation as far as the Mauritian context is concerned.

This paper aims to examine the effect of e-evaluation on work motivation among teachers during the Movement Control Order (MCO) in COVID-19 and determining the mediating role of stress.

The study is designed using a causal research design to examine the cause-effect relationship between the study variables. The study sample consists of 595 school teachers selected via convenient sampling. Quantitative data are collected from an online survey through the questionnaires with demographic, stress, e-evaluation and work motivation developed by the researchers were distributed during the MCO period. To test the model, structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied by using AMOS 21.

The results indicated that the e-evaluation, stress and work motivation of teachers during the MCO were conducted at a moderate level. The stress relationship with work motivation of teachers was also weak and showed a negative relationship, while e-evaluation and work motivation showed a strong relationship. The results of the SEM analysis revealed that the model fit was achieved with RMSEA = 0.07, GFI = 0.96, CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.97, ChiSq/df = 4.30 and p = 0.00. In addition, there was no role of stress as a mediator in the relationship between e-evaluation and work motivation and e-evaluation contributed 54% to work motivation.

This study underlines our contention that teachers’ work motivation correlated positively with their e-evaluation. The findings suggest that teachers’ stress cannot mediate the relationship between e-evaluation and work motivation. The limitations of the study include the convenience sampling, non-probability sampling technique, not chosen at random and undermines the generalizations from sample to the population.

The results provide a useful framework to teachers for the successful implementation of e-evaluations in their instruction to enhance their work-motivation.

There is a lack of e-evaluation studies in teacher education and teaching strategies, and the correlation between e-evaluation and work motivation during COVID-19 pandemic is often absent.

Translating motivational research to classroom instruction may be so difficult because the two enterprises of psychological research and teaching are inherently different in goals and assumptions. Whereas psychological theory is meant to be broad and generalizable, educational practice must attend to individual and situational differences. For instance, a great deal of research suggests that mastery goal structures are related to desirable beliefs and behaviors. However, knowing that this is so does not help teachers know how to foster mastery goals in their classrooms and whether or how practices might vary given differences among students, developmental levels, and content areas. As Patrick (2004) noted, the theoretical notion of mastery goal structure as it is currently conceptualized was not developed in classrooms and does not address how a mastery goal structure is either manifested or communicated to students. Although it makes theoretical sense to provide “appropriate challenge” to students, how a teacher adapts that principle to students with a range of abilities and attitudes, from challenge seekers to avoiders, is not obvious. Research can provide only a general theoretical heuristic for understanding tendencies and does not necessarily explain individuals' behavior over time (Turner & Patrick, 2004). For motivational research to be meaningful and useful to educators, it needs to help them interpret student behavior as specific responses to specific sets of circumstances. Pajares (2007) expressed this well when he noted:Research findings … drawn from educational psychology broadly, and motivation theory and research in particular are bounded by a host of situated, cultural factors that must be attended to if the constructs themselves are to have any, as William James (1907/1975) termed it, practical, or cash, value. (p. 30)Therefore, in its present form, theory may not appear useful to teachers because of its seeming lack of specificity. These issues apply to all current theories of motivation.

Our ongoing program of research works with teachers to help them become more autonomy supportive during instruction and hence more able to promote students’ classroom motivation and engagement.

We have published five experimentally based, longitudinally designed, teacher-focused intervention studies that have tested the effectiveness and educational benefits of an autonomy-supportive intervention program (ASIP).

Findings show that (1) teachers can learn how to become more autonomy supportive and less controlling toward students, (2) students of the teachers who participate in ASIP report greater psychological need satisfaction and lesser need frustration, (3) these same students report and behaviorally display a wide range of important educational benefits, such as greater classroom engagement, (4) teachers benefit as much from giving autonomy support as their students do from receiving it as teachers show large postintervention gains in outcomes such as teaching efficacy and job satisfaction, and (5) these ASIP-induced benefits are long lasting as teachers use the ASIP experience as a professional developmental opportunity to upgrade the quality of their motivating style.

Our ASIP helps teachers learn how to better support their students’ autonomy during instruction. The value of this teaching skill can be seen in teachers’ and students’ enhanced classroom experience and functioning.

It is vital in today’s society that teachers are proactively involved in educational change. Given that proactive motivation is a critical driver of proactivity, this study aims to investigate how teachers’ formal and informal workplace-learning experiences were connected with their proactive motivations to implement educational change.

The authors used a qualitative case study approach to describe the relationships between teachers’ formal and informal learning activities and their different proactive motivations. The authors collected data from 17 teachers via individual interviews and open-ended questionnaire and performed analyses using a continuous inductive and deductive coding process.

The authors found that informal teacher learning can trigger three types of proactive motivation, whereas formal teacher learning is mainly connected with the can do and energised to motivations. The authors also found that formal and informal learning complement and compete with each other in shaping the can do motivation. Moreover, the authors found that informal learning played the dominant role in the reason to motivation, whereas informal and formal learning were separately connected to the energised to motivation.

These findings indicate that greater attention must be paid to teachers’ informal workplace-learning experiences. Specifically, teachers’ informal learning experiences should be actively integrated into their formal workplace training to enhance their proactive motivation to educational change. Moreover, teachers’ learning preferences and teaching experience should be considered in the design of teacher-training programmes.

Based on the proactive motivation model of Parker et al. (2010), the authors have uncovered the mechanisms of workplace learning that drive teacher proactivity. The authors have examined the relationship between teachers’ formal and informal workplace-learning and proactive teaching. The findings will assist policymakers and administrators to identify effective means of motivating teachers to engage in workplace learning.

The research investigates perceptions of teachers in the Arab education system in Israel concerning the effect of their principal’s leadership and gender on their motivation. Relying on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as an analytic tool to understand the Arab school, the purpose of this paper is to answer the following research questions: first, how do the teachers perceive the leadership style and gender of their principal and what influence do these perceptions have on their motivation? Second, what are the influences of the different dimensions of culture described by Hofstede on the teachers’ motivation?

To answer these questions, 18 teachers from different schools in the Arab education system (10 female and 8 male) were interviewed.

The research revealed three themes which describe the teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ leadership styles with consideration of the principals’ gender: the principals’ involvement and sharing of school operations and decision making with the teachers; the extent of autonomy given to teachers; and establishment of principal–teacher relationships.

The paper concludes with implications of these leadership styles for teachers’ motivation for work, and suggestions are given to improve Arab principals’ practices and thus to enhance teachers’ motivation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the levels of stress and work motivation of primary and secondary school teachers, investigate factors affecting stress of teachers and validate the consistency of the model and empirical data.

The sample consisted of 400 teachers of primary and secondary schools. Questionnaire was implemented as the instrument and the data were analyzed by t-test, ANOVA and confirmatory factor analysis.

The results indicated that teachers of secondary schools have higher overall stress than teachers of primary schools for many reasons, such as financial issues and work obligations. Stress was found to be significantly positively associated with work motivation in secondary school teachers. The study revealed that demographic and work motivation factors influence teacher stress. The validation of a goodness of fitted model demonstrated an acceptable model fit with empirical data (χ² test/df = 1.913, GFI = 0.934, CFI = 0.965, NFI = 0.930, AGFI = 0.893).

Teachers under stress could negatively influence their students’ academic performance and might be more vulnerable to occupational diseases. Therefore, the teachers should find favorite activities that reduce stress and thereby contribute to effective teaching. This study would be beneficial for anyone who works to support teachers and wants to reduce turnover among teachers.