Abstract:

Teachers’ engagement in primary and secondary schools has been one of the most discussed topics in the Czech education system. Even though engagement has been studied in this group, most of the research was based on scales that were designed to measure engagement in corporate settings. In this study, we took a different approach and measured engagement with the Engaged Teacher Scale which ads the social aspect of teaching. Furthermore, we investigated Czech teachers’ engagement through the lens of Self-determination theory to verify the correlates between engagement and different forms of regulations and principal autonomy support in Czech schools’ environment. In terms of methodology, the study focused on a sample of 251 Czech primary and secondary school teachers. The data collection tools were: The Engaged Teacher Scale (Klassen et al., 2013); Motivation for Teaching Scale (Abós et al., 2018); The Work Climate Questionnaire (Baard et al., 2004) and Value Consonance (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011). Regarding the teachers’ engagement, the study found correlates between engagement and different qualities of motivation similar to those in other fields – most notably between autonomous forms of motivation and engagement. We have also found moderate correlations between teachers’ engagement and value consonance in schools which we discuss from the point of view of internalization. Leader autonomy support showed a mild correlation with different forms of motivation but seemed to have stronger relations to teacher’s engagement – especially the social engagement with colleagues. This study includes the interpretation and discussion of the results aligned with the literature review, limitations, and applications.

Keywords:

Work engagement, self-determination theory, autonomy support, teachers, value consonance.