CHANGES IN TEACHERS’ MOTIVATION IN TIME

Lehman (2000) claims that although the idealism and enthusiasm of the first-year teachers are very high, the reality of teaching life reduces their enthusiasm about working in the field. The nature of the teaching profession is indeed demanding due to the responsibility of raising future generations (Krecic & Grmek, 2005). Then, the attractors initially motivating the beginning teachers became insufficient to retain teachers within the teaching profession when they are left alone in a classroom. Beginning teachers suddenly realize that the reality of the classroom does not meet their expectations (Gold, 1996; Stokking, Leenders, Jong, & Tartwijk, 2003). As such, this study aimed to shed light on how teachers’ motivation was changed before entering the teaching profession and after getting involved in teaching profession. In order to investigate this phenomenon, 16 pre-service early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ were interviewed about source of motivation on their profession immediately after their graduation. Then, those 16 teachers began to work in public schools in Turkey at 10 different cities. They were contacted and interviewed once more, upon their dedication and commitment to teach young children and how they sustained their commitment to teach.
This qualitative study embraces a phenomenological approach in which the researcher attempted to describe the meaning of the lived experiences of a phenomenon for several individuals (Creswell, 2007). Moustakas’s (1994) phenomenological analysis was utilized to analyse the data. Audio-recorded interviews transcribed verbatim. Then, significant statement which reflects teachers’ motivation best highlighted. Meaning units were formed based on highlighted statements. Overlapping and repetitive statements were cleaned out from data set to make themes and clusters more clear. Finally, essence of phenomenon was created.
Findings have revealed that before starting to teach all the pre-service teachers expressed that their main source of motivation was intrinsic, not extrinsic. Pre-service teachers wanted to make a difference and be satisfied with the accomplishment in their profession. Being accomplished meant helping children to reach their full potential both academically and personally. All of the pre-service teachers defined love of children as an essential characteristic of being a good teacher. This might be related with their source of motivation since 13 participants identified their personality as well-suited to be teachers and love of children was a part of their personality. Still, participants have observed burned out teachers in their practicum course and they were afraid of losing their enthusiasm like those teachers.
When they enter in actual teaching life, their source of motivation was not change. They all expressed that their motivation mainly originated from love of profession and love of children. Another primary source of motivation for beginning teachers was observing children’s development. All of the beginning teachers were suspicious about their teaching skills before starting profession. In this sense, observing children’s development in a positive way might have helped them to eliminate the doubt of their skills and made them feel powerful on their profession. Then, both their motivation and love of profession increased.