TAIWANESE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS’ MOTIVATION TOWARD TEACHING TASKS ACROSS SUBJECTS

Abstract

This study is aimed to investigate Taiwanese senior high school teachers’ motivation toward teaching tasks across different subjects. The focus is to examine whether there are differences in teacher motivation toward five teaching tasks: class preparation, teaching, evaluation of students, classroom management, and administrative tasks, across five subjects: Chinese, English, social studies, maths, and science.
A total of 283 practising teachers in 11 senior high schools located in northern Taiwan completed a questionnaire adapted from the Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers (Fernet et al., 2008). The collected quantitative data was analysed by computing descriptive statistics and inferential statistics which included two-way ANOVA. Thirty teachers were involved in the qualitative data collection using semi-structured interviews. The phenomenographic method was used to analyse the interview data, to uncover the qualitatively different ways in which teachers experience and conceptualise teaching and learning.
The findings from the quantitative analyses showed that, in general, teachers had a relatively high level of autonomous motivation and a moderately high level of controlled motivation toward the five teaching tasks. There were significant differences in (1) intrinsic motivation toward class management, (2) identified regulation toward class preparation, and (3) introjected regulation toward class preparation and teaching across the five subjects. No significant differences in external regulation and amotivation toward the five teaching tasks across five subjects were found. In contrast, there were significant differences in the five types of motivation (intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, introjected regulation, external regulation, and amotivation) toward the five different teaching tasks across the five subject areas.
The findings from both the quantitative and qualitative analyses were integrated in order to answer research question 2: Are there differences in the five types of motivation toward teaching across five subjects? The results showed that: 1) teachers of Chinese, social studies, and English might have a tendency to have a higher level of introjected regulation toward teaching; 2) teachers of maths and science tended to have a lower level of introjected regulation toward teaching; 3) science teachers might have an inclination to have intrinsic motivation toward teaching; and 4) English teachers were apt to have external regulation toward teaching.
It is recommended that government policy makers, educational reformers, school principals, administrators, and teachers should consider the potential influence of Chinese culture, the social and working context, subject areas, and teaching tasks on teachers’ levels and types of motivation. It is also recommended that they consider the nuances of teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning across subjects when implementing educational reforms. Finally, the influence of Confucian culture on teachers’ work motivation and conceptions of teaching and learning calls for more exploration, as this study only provides preliminary evidence on the existing work motivation and conceptions of teaching and learning held by teachers in Taiwan.