Content area
Full Text
Abstract
The present study reports on the construction and validation process of a scale that measures work motivation of secondary school English teachers in Korea. An initial pool of 48 statements describing various aspects of English teacher motivation was developed based on semi-structured interviews with two high school English teachers and a pilot study. The survey, termed 'English Teacher Motivation Scale (ETMS)', was administered to 299 secondary school English teachers. The collected data were submitted to exploratory factor analysis in order to discover the factor structure of English teacher motivation. Principal axis factoring with promax rotation resulted in a 4-factor solution distinguishing four aspects of work motivation of secondary school English teachers: teacher efficacy, school leadership, working condition, and negative influence. The internal consistency of the four resulting subscales ranged from .863 to .612 while that of the whole scale was .882. Implications for teacher development and future research are discussed.
Key Words: Scale development and validation, English teacher motivation, Teacher self-efficacy, School leadership.
1. Introduction
Teachers are always considered an essential component of education system as they play an active role in improving not only students' learning but also in influencing their lives. It is even said that the quality of teachers determines the quality of education. As a matter of fact, drawing and keeping qualified teachers is a key issue when it comes to education planning [1]. Consequently, a variety of measures (e.g., financial compensation, teaching hours, autonomy, job security, etc.) have been employed in order to attract and satisfy teachers so that they can stay in the teaching profession. There is no doubt that the more satisfied teachers are with their work, the better motivated they become to teach. Nevertheless, little has been known about teachers' satisfaction and motivation levels, let alone the factors affecting them [2].
It is not difficult to hear anecdotal accounts of teachers who confess the decrease of motivation to teach and the increase of desire to leave the profession even before retirement. This phenomenon is, in particular, frequently observed among secondary school English teachers in Korea. Considering that English is one of the most important subjects in the secondary school curriculum in Korea, it is crucial not only to recruit English teachers with high qualities, but...