The What, Why, How of Teachers’ Beliefs about Motivation (Poster 6)

• In Event: A Global Perspective of the Landscape of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs

Abstract

Purpose
We sought to understand teachers' beliefs about what motivates students. However, this led to the inevitable connection between what teachers believe about the nature of student motivation and the decisions they make about how to motivate students. Throughout this presentation we negotiate this tension.

Perspectives
We anchor our discourse on teachers’ beliefs about motivation and motivating to Robinson’s (2023) framework of motivational climate. Teachers’ beliefs about student motivation are represented in the left panel of Figure 1 and their beliefs about motivational supports are represented in the right panel. Following Parajes (1992), we define beliefs as “an individual’s judgement of the truth or felicity of a proposition” (p. 316) as related to the knowledge, people, and events they encounter in their profession. Importantly, we recognize that, as a construct, beliefs are different from knowledge and may conflict with evidence (Pajares, 1992).

Mode of Inquiry
We use recent empirical research to describe teachers’ beliefs. Teachers often view motivation as an on-off switch that students have or do not have rather than a continuum that varies in quality (Author, 2018). In terms of sources, Schwan (2021) found that teachers most often believed students were unmotivated due to home and personal factors - things that are external to the teacher and hence associated with beliefs that motivation is not the responsibility of the teacher (Hardré & Hennessey, 2013). Indeed, research shows that both practicing and pre-service teachers report significantly lower levels of responsibility for student motivation compared to the other three domains (Author, 2018; 2020; Lauermann & Karabenick, 2013). Seeking to remedy this, researchers have designed workshops and interventions to shift teachers’ motivating styles (Reeve & Cheon, 2014) and increase their belief that students’ can gain quality motivation (Author et al., 2020).

Substantiated Conclusions
The consistency of results from 1994 (Nolen & Nicholls) to 2023 (Author) documenting what teachers naturally believe about student motivation and motivational supports is simultaneously shocking and unsurprising. We had hoped that changes in the diversity of students and new pedagogical approaches had created opportunities for teachers to arrive at new beliefs about student motivation and motivational supports. This seems not to be the case. Many beliefs teachers hold about motivation agree with the research and other things do not. In other words, beliefs about motivation remain hard to change (Pajares, 1992).

Scholarly Significance
More than ever, it seems clear that one reason for this is because beliefs about motivation are instantiated in educational cultures that value performance, rewards, and competition. Thus, as the field moves forward, we invite researchers and teachers alike to have a bigger imagination for student motivation and motivational supports that moves away from longstanding narrowly focused reliance on external motivation and embraces motivation rooted in autonomy, relationships, and competence that may be a more natural fit with culturally responsive approaches to teaching and a profession diverse in both professionals and students.

Authors

• Lia Daniels, University of Alberta

• Kendra Lin Wells, University of Alberta

• Tessa Pollitt, University of Alberta

• Michelle Brady, University of Alberta