Changes in beginning teachers’ teaching motivation: The impact of school-based factors

The current education reform has created challenges to teachers and it even washed out the aspiration of young people in joining this profession. Study on teacher’s motivation has to be renewed at this time and the study of teacher’s motivation over time can tap understanding into the career profile of teachers to examine factors for a successful career while sustaining or cultivating a preferred orientation to teach. Using a longitudinal design, changes in beginning teachers’ teaching motivation are explored in the present study. Beginning teachers were interviewed first when they graduated from teacher-training program in 2007 and then after they had been teaching for two years in 2009. The result is presented in a 4-fold typology in which teachers’ initial teaching motivations interact with school environment to produce different teaching outlook. School factors such as volume of non-educational workload, equitability in distribution of work and teachers’ professional autonomy are found to have important influence on teachers’ teaching motivation.