Teacher Motivation

Theory and Practice

Paul W. Richardson, Stuart A. Karabenick, Helen M.G. Watt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136314063
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Psicología educativa

Teacher Motivation: Theory and Practice provides a much needed introduction to the current status and future directions of theory and research on teacher motivation. Although there is a robust literature covering the theory and research on student motivation, until recently there has been comparatively little attention paid to teachers. This volume draws together a decade of work from psychological theorists and researchers interested in what motivates people to choose teaching as a career, what motivates them as they work with students in classrooms, the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic forces on career experiences, and how their motivational profiles vary at different stages of their career. With chapters from leading experts on the topic, this volume provides a critical resource not only for educational psychologists, but also for those working in related fields such as educational leadership, teacher development, policy makers and school psychology.

Section 1
Major Theoretical Approaches to Teacher Motivation

1
Why People Choose Teaching as a Career

An Expectancy-Value Approach to Understanding Teacher Motivation

Paul W. Richardson and Helen M. G. Watt¹

Introduction

While there has been persistent interest in why people choose teaching as a career, until recently, there was little agreement among researchers about how best to investigate the issue. By the 1990s a body of research had identified various motivations broadly categorized as intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic. In their seminal review, Brookhart and Freeman (1992) concluded that “altruistic, service-oriented goals and other intrinsic motivations are the source of the primary reasons entering teacher candidates report for why they chose teaching as a career” (p. 46). More recently the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2005) reported on studies independently conducted in France, Australia, Belgium (French Community), Canada (Québec), the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic, and the United Kingdom, which indicated that the most frequently nominated motivations for choosing teaching as a career were the desire to work with youth, the potential for intellectual fulfillment, and the wish to make a social contribution. Reassuringly, the aspiration to work with children and adolescents has been identified as central in many studies conducted over time in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe (e.g., Fox, 1961; Joseph & Green, 1986; Kyriacou & Coulthard, 2000; Lortie, 1975; Tudhope, 1944; Valentine, 1934). In different sociocultural contexts, such as Brunei (Yong, 1995), Zimbabwe (Chivore, 1988), Cameroon (Abangma, 1981), the Caribbean (Brown, 1992), and Jamaica (Bastick, 1999), “extrinsic motives” such as salary, job security, and career status have been found to be more prominent.

However, the absence of an agreed upon theoretical and analytical framework meant that what constituted intrinsic, altruistic, extrinsic, or other categories of motivation had been variously operationalized, resulting in a lack of definitional precision and inconsistencies across studies, making problematic the comparison of findings from one study to another. For example, the desire to work with children has sometimes been regarded as an intrinsic motivation (e.g., Young, 1995), and sometimes as altruistic (Yong, 1995). These definitional difficulties were compounded by researchers using different survey instruments, with little or no reporting of construct validity or reliability and an over-reliance on raw frequency counts. Faced with these definitional and measurement issues, and in an effort to identify the underlying psychological processes associated with motivations for career choice, we turned to developed frameworks from the motivation literature to provide a unified and comprehensive approach with improved explanatory power. What motivates people to want to become teachers, how those motivations are measured, whether and how they can be realized in particular school settings, and their impact on how teachers teach and interact with students are questions central to our continuing longitudinal program of research delineated in this chapter.

It is not surprising that researchers continue to investigate what motivates people to choose to enter the teaching profession, given the combined impetus of difficulties in finding suitably qualified people to fill teacher vacancies in particular fields and regions and to retain teachers beyond their beginning years, as well as the drive for school reform and improved teacher quality. In most countries around the world, teachers represent a large heterogeneous workforce that is positioned by governments from diverse political persuasions as central to the development of an educated, skilled, highly adaptable workforce, deemed necessary for economic and social development (OECD, 2005, 2009). Research and policy attention has increasingly concentrated on the quality of those recruited into teacher education and the processes for professionally developing, rewarding, and retaining the best quality teachers (OECD, 2009). There has been a notable shift in the policy debate from a need to recruit more people into teaching, to a focus on how best to recruit and sustain the most effective teachers— even if it means dropping 5 percent of teachers identified as low performing (see Hanushek & Rivkin, 2012).

Background to the FIT-Choice Project

Our interest in teacher motivation emerged from our professional work over several decades with people enrolled in teacher education programs. While it was commonplace for many teacher educators to ask incoming students why they had chosen teaching as a career, their motivations and choice were not systematically researched. Explanations for the attractiveness of teaching as a career choice were at times founded upon anecdote or assumptions sustained by studies reporting reasons such as enjoyment of working with children, a desire to teach, the influence of positive role models, perceived employment conditions, and a desire to make a difference (see Skilbeck & Connell, 2003). Richardson was course director for an Australian graduate-entry teacher education program and intrigued by the many applications from those who were making a significant change out of what are often perceived as demanding, high status, and financially rewarding careers. What would motivate people to change into a career such as teaching, which is typically perceived to be both lower in social status and offering no more than a modest salary? And, would their motivations differ from what motivates people to choose teaching at all? Answers to these questions did not seem to us to be obvious or unimportant.

Among the diversity of people undertaking teacher education, we wanted to understand their values, beliefs, expectancies, hopes, and aspirations for career development. We wondered whether teachers might share core motivations despite their personal and career histories, or, whether different motivations were more or less important for different types of beginning teachers. For example, did those entering teacher education programs to become early childhood, primary, and secondary teachers have similar or very different motivations? We were also interested in whether different country’s salary structures, the relative status of teaching as a career, or working conditions would produce different sets of motivations among future teachers. Were some politicians and the mass media right in suggesting that teaching represented a “fallback career” for those unable to pursue more prestigious and financially rewarding careers? And finally, did teachers’ motivations matter for their subsequent professional engagement and teaching behaviors?

Theoretical Underpinnings of the FIT-Choice Framework

In our development of the FIT-Choice framework (Factors Influencing Teaching Choice; www.fitchoice.org), it was puzzling to realize that there had been little dialogue between the teacher education literature on the one hand, and the literatures concerning motivations and occupational choice on the other. These literatures had developed independently of one another, and much of what we know about career choice across a range of careers had not influenced the research concerning teaching. Concordantly, the wealth of research within the motivation literature concerned students; teachers had not been studied in the same way as individuals, having their own motivations, expectations, goals, and aspirations.

Within the field of motivation and career choice, the Eccles et al. expectancy-value theory (EVT; for recent reviews see Eccles, 2005, 2009) proposed that educational, vocational, and other achievement-related choices are directly impacted by one’s abilities, beliefs, and expectancies for success on the one hand, and the value one attaches to the task on the other. This is a theoretically comprehensive and empirically robust framework originally developed to examine gendered patterns of senior high mathematics enrollment (Eccles (Parsons) et al., 1983). Factors that comprise the values component include how much a person enjoys the task (Intrinsic value), whether it is seen as useful (Utility value), and if it is important for achieving a person’s own goals (Attainment value). The less studied negative “Cost” value component captures what an individual must give up (opportunity cost), negative outcomes such as financial loss, psychological experiences (e.g., anxiety), and time and effort required.

The expectancy-value framework has been more broadly applied to other academic school disciplines (e.g., English and Language Arts: Jacobs, Lanza, Osgood, Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002; Watt, 2004; and sport: Fredricks & Eccles, 2002) and, importantly for our purposes, also to specific types of careers (e.g., Watt, 2002, 2006; Watt, Shapka, et al., 2012). Taking its point of departure from this work, our FIT-Choice framework was advanced to provide a coherent and integrated model to guide systematic inquiry into the primary motivations of why people choose to become teachers (Figure 1.1; see Richardson & Watt, 2006, 2010; Watt & Richardson, 2007, 2008).

Intrinsic value and perceived ability factors, emphasized within expectancy-value theory, are the main focus of several models in the motivation literature; also in the career choice literature more generally, ability-related beliefs have been a key focus (see Social Cognitive Career Theory; Lent, 2001). Intriguingly, these factors had received little attention in studies of why people choose teaching as a career. However, other reasons that had been documented in the teacher education literature could all be mapped onto constructs within the expectancy-value model, which additionally suggested other important motivations. In our integrative FIT-Choice model (for a review see Watt & Richardson, 2008), we developed a psychometric scale with factors that tapped the altruistic-type motivations long emphasized in the teacher education literature (e.g., Book & Freeman, 1986; Brown, 1992; Lortie, 1975; Moran, Kilpat-rick, Abbott, Dallatt, & McClune, 2001; Serow & Forrest, 1994), together with more personally utilitarian and intrinsic motivations, and ability-related motivations, which have received considerable attention in the career choice literature (see Lent, Lopez, & Bieschke, 1993).

FIGURE 1.1 FIT-Choice theoretical model.

The FIT-Choice model takes into account antecedent Social influences and Prior teaching and learning experiences followed by the more proximal influences of Self-perceptions, Values, and Fallback career. Higher-order values constructs in our model are Personal utility value and Social utility value. Personal utility consists of the first-order constructs of Job security, Time for family, and Job transferability; Social utility value contains Shape future of children/adolescents, Enhance social equity, Make social contribution, and Work with children/adolescents. Multiple items measure each factor with response options ranging from 1 (“not at all important”) through 7 (“extremely important”). As a preface to all motivation items in the scale, “I chose to become a teacher because …” was typed in large boldfaced font at the top of each page and was also the prompt for an open response at the beginning of the survey (see Richardson & Watt, 2006). In addition to the 12 motivation factors, the FIT-Choice scale measures perceptions about the demands and rewards of the teaching profession, rated from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“extremely”). The higher-order Task demand is composed of first-order constructs Expertise and Difficulty; similarly, Task return contains Social status and Salary. Experiences of Social dissuasion and Career choice satisfaction were also assessed. All parts of the model are proposed to work together to predict choice of a teaching career and professional engagement outcomes (see Figure 1.1). We also developed outcome indicators in the form of the Professional Engagement and Career Development Aspirations scale (PECDA; Watt & Richardson, 2008) to measure planned persistence, planned effort, professional development aspirations, and leadership aspirations.

Psychometric Validation of the FIT-Choice Scale

To test the psychometric properties of the FIT-Choice scale, we recruited entire cohorts of first-year preservice teachers from different Australian universities in two States (N = 1651; see Richardson & Watt, 2006).We conducted validation analyses involving exploratory factor analyses (EFA), followed by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) using different subsamples to avoid overcapitalizing on sample characteristics. To establish convergent and divergent construct validity across the set of first-order and higher-order factors, a nested CFA was subsequently conducted on the combined cohorts. This resulted in our final empirically validated FIT-Choice scale containing 12 subscales for motivations, 4 subscales concerning beliefs about teaching, and a further subscale measuring how satisfied participants were with their choice of a teaching career (Watt & Richardson, 2007).

Subsequently, the FIT-Choice scale has been used by researchers from other settings. Having developed and validated the FIT-Choice scale among preservice teachers in Australia, our next step was to check whether it would function similarly among samples from different contexts. We could not assume that the scale would measure the same constructs in the same way in different sociocultural contexts. For the scale to be useful for other researchers, we needed to determine whether it would perform similarly in different samples and settings. In cross-cultural comparisons, especially when using self-report measures, it is necessary to establish scale invariance (Vijver & Tanzer, 1998). Strong factorial invariance (Little, 1997; Meredith, 1993) means that constructs are fundamentally functioning in the same way such that cross-sample differences do not affect the underlying measurement characteristics. Once this has been achieved, qualitative comparisons can be meaningfully undertaken across samples. In a collaborative international study, we were able to directly assess and evaluate similar psychometric properties across Australian, U.S., German, and Norwegian samples (Watt, Richardson, et al., 2012); the resulting model fitted the data satisfactorily, and strong factorial invariance was established. In other studies researchers have reported good construct validity and reliability across a range of settings (see Watt & Richardson, 2012). The FIT-Choice scale consequently provides a promising measurement platform with which to directly compare and contrast different teacher motivations across samples and contexts and to enable testing of associations with factors that may be antecedents or consequences of those motivations.

What Are the Main Motivations of Future Teachers?

In the original Australian FIT-Choice sample, ability beliefs and intrinsic value (emphasized as major influences within the expectancy-value framework) were the highest-rated motivations for choosing teaching as a career. The next most highly endorsed motivations were Social utility values (Make social contribution, Shape future of children/adolescents, Work with children/adolescents, and Enhance social equity) and Prior teaching and learning experiences. It was reassuring that Fallback career motivations were rated lowest, indicating that people had not chosen teaching because they were unable to pursue more preferred options; the next lowest endorsed was Social influences of others’ reinforcement to pursue a teaching career. A prevailing stereotype has been that teaching is chosen mainly by women because it is a family-friendly career, yet, when incorporated in a comprehensive multidimensional framework alongside competing motivations, Time for family ratings were moderate, as were other Personal utility values (Job security and Job transferability). Our Australian sample of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Figures and Tables
• Teacher Motivation Matters: An Introduction
• SECTION 1 Major Theoretical Approaches to Teacher Motivation
• SECTION 2 Motivation-Related Processes
• SECTION 3 Motivation and Teacher Career Trajectories
• Index