Changes in Teachers' Motivation in Time

Abstract

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 their 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. Moustakas's [1] phenomenological analysis was utilized to analyse the data. Findings have revealed that before starting to teach all of the pre-service teachers expressed that their main source of motivation was intrinsic, not extrinsic. 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.