The Influence of Regulatory Styles of Teaching Motivation on Academic Teaching

• In Event: Motivation and Emotions of University Faculty: Predicting Teaching and Research Performance, Stress, and Well-Being

Abstract

Academic teaching is suspected to be the German professor’s stepchild, neglected in favour of research. Unlike other countries where there are well-established career tracks devoted to teaching, academic careers are still widely dependent on research productivity in Germany (Wilkesmann, 2016). Nonetheless, two questions arise: What motivates professors to teach at all under these circumstances? And how is their motivation related to the perceived significance attributed to their teaching behavior?

In the current study, we utilized the Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci 2000, 2006; Wilkesmann & Schmid, 2014) that differentiates two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsically motivated action describes any activity characterized by pure enjoyment. In terms of teaching, professors feel much pleasure from their teaching activities and are genuinely interested in interacting with their students. In contrast, extrinsically motivated action is carried out for separable outcomes and can be divided into four types, which differ in the degree to which they have been internalized into the self-concept. These four types can be arranged along a continuum from external control to autonomous self-regulation: external, introjected, identified, and integrated regulation. In regards to teaching, external regulation can relate to merely fulfilling contractual agreements. Introjected regulation to teach encompasses feelings of self-affirmation to perform well in the classroom or feelings of guilt when teaching duties are neglected. Identified regulation means that teaching has become personally important and meaningful in one’s career. The highest degree of internalization is integrated regulation and implies that the teaching task is fully in line with an academic’s self-perception.

Between November 2016 and March 2017, we invited over 19,000 professors at German research universities to participate in our online survey. We established a net-sample of 2,663 completed questionnaires (14% overall response rate) that is representative for the population of German university professors.

We estimated multiple regression models to test the influence of teaching motivation and organizational factors on the significance given to teaching. While controlling for gender, age and discipline, intrinsic motivation was the strongest predictor, followed by identified teaching motivation (as we could not confirm the exact theoretical dimensionality of the SDT model, we deleted the integrated regulation from the overall scale). Introjected and external regulation were not significantly related to attributed teaching significance. Additionally, the perceived teaching infrastructure and teaching culture positively predicted the dependent variable; such as the perceived amount of didactic support opportunities, the perceived amount of structural incentives, the degree to which the daily teaching routine is characterized by an lively exchange of teaching matters with colleagues, and constructive feedback from their students.

Taken together, our findings suggest that the significance given to teaching is mostly self-determined, which is good news in support of SDT. Nevertheless, as professors do not teach in a social vacuum, thus organizational efforts to create a more ‘teaching supportive culture’ (Feldman & Paulsen, 1999) are reinforcing factors that professors attribute more significance to their teaching duties.

Authors

• Uwe Wilkesmann, TU Dortmund University

• Sabine Lauer, TU Dortmund University