The Impact of Teaching Career Motivations and Coping Resources on Early-Career Teachers’ Relational Style

• In Event: Antecedents and Correlates of Teachers’ Relational Work

Abstract

Future teachers’ initial motivations have been found to impact their professional engagement and career development aspirations (PECDA) at the outset of their teaching career (Watt & Richardson, 2008), and different personal and professional coping styles have been discerned among early career teachers (Richardson, Watt, & Devos, 2013). In this presentation, we report findings from two studies using longitudinal data from the FIT-Choice project. In Study 1, we hypothesise that initial motivations for career choice will impact teacher-reported classroom relational dimensions during early career. In Study 2, we examine whether and how these relational dimensions are distinguished for early career teachers who exhibit different profiles of personal and professional coping.

Methods: In Study 1, the FIT-Choice multidimensional scale (Watt & Richardson, 2007) measured initial teaching motivations at entry to teacher education, as predictors of teacher-reported positive and negative relational dimensions among early career Australian teachers. We anticipated that the motivation to work with children/adolescents and coping profiles (e.g. “Healthy ambitious”/“Diligent”) should predict subsequent positive relationships with students; conversely, that “Fallback” career motivations and “Wornout”/“Burnout” coping profiles should report more negative relationships with students.

Studies involved 627 early career teachers, from commencement of teacher education (Study 1) until up until 8 years in teaching (Studies 1 and 2). 271 participants were elementary (237 women), and 356 secondary teachers (257 women). In Study 1 participants completed the FIT-Choice scale (Time 1) and an online survey (Time 2) which included measures of perceived relatedness (7-items, α=.90) and negativity (7-items, α=.77) with their classes (TSS, Watt & Richardson, 2007). In Study 2, personal and professional coping profiles were educed from Subjective wellbeing (α=.78), Professional ambition (α=.73) and Professional exertion (α=.68) from the English-translated AVEM short-form (Kieschke & Schaarschmidt, 2008), together with the Emotional Exhaustion subscale of the MBI-ES (α=.90; Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996).

Results: Findings supported our predictions. In Study 1, an SEM model showed initial motivations of “ability” and “work with children” positively predicted to relatedness ((N=627, df=284)=586.85, TLI=.942, CFI=.953, RMSEA=.041). Problematic motivations were choosing teaching as a fallback career, and social persuasion to become a teacher - both more frequently shown by secondary teachers – which subsequently resulted in more negativity towards students. In Study 2, MANOVA identified significant differences between the 6 coping profiles (Healthy ambitious, Diligent, Sparing, Good Health, [path to] Burnout, and Wornout) on Relatedness and Negativity (F (10,904)=5.131, partial =.054); univariate results also showed significant cluster differences. In general, Healthy ambitious then Diligent expressed most positive relational style, and (path to) Burnout, Wornout least. Sparing and Good Health were middling. For negative interactional style, the picture was reversed.

Discussion: Motivations and coping resources independently predict positive and negative dimensions of teachers’ relational work, indicating both internal systems to be of importance to understanding the quality of teachers’ relational work.

Authors

• Paul W. Richardson, Monash University

• Helen M.G. Watt, Monash University