Teachers’ motivation: Predictors and impacts of teachers’ success expectancies and values on the promotion of self-regulated learning
Autor: Dr. phil. des Johannes Jud
Gutachtende: Prof. Dr. Yves Karlen, Universität Zürich, Prof. Dr. Elena Makarova, Universität Basel, Prof. Dr. Joachim Wirth, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (D)
Projektdauer: 2020 - 2024
Abstract:
Self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are important for academic achievement and lifelong learning (Dent & Koenka, 2016). Although teachers can successfully foster SRL competencies (De Boer et al., 2018; Thomas et al., 2020), SRL promotion occurs only to a limited extent (Dignath & Büttner, 2018). Teachers’ motivation is a core professional competence for promoting self-regulated learning in the classroom (Karlen et al., 2020). According to Situated Expectancy Value Theory (SEVT), motivation is a complex and dynamic construct that includes various subcomponents, such as success expectancies, values and costs. These subcomponents are assumed to be related to each other and influenced by personal and contextual characteristics (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). However, previous research in the field of SRL has primarily focused on teachers’ success expectancies, and few findings exist about teachers’ values and costs. Additionally, few findings exist about the development of teachers’ motivation and how teachers’ motivation is linked to students’ motivation.
In this cumulative dissertation, SEVT is applied to the context of SRL and predictors and the impact of various subcomponents of teachers’ motivation to promote SRL are investigated. Using a person-centred and a variable-centred approach, studies 1 and 2 investigate how motivational subcomponents relate to each other, to teachers’ SRL promotion, and teachers’ characteristics, such as their mindsets about SRL. Study 3 explores the transmission of teachers’ motivation to students’ SRL motivation in a multilevel analysis. Finally, study 4 analyses whether teachers’ success expectancies can be enhanced through an intervention and whether teachers’ characteristics moderate this development. A cross-sectional dataset (N = 280 lower secondary school teachers) for studies 1-3 and a longitudinal dataset (N = 54 lower secondary school teachers) were used to address the research questions.
The results from study 1 indicate that three motivational profiles exist, with high success expectancies positively linked to values and negatively to opportunity costs. All profiles showed high effort costs. More motivated profiles were related to more SRL promotion, more experiences promoting SRL and more consistent SRL mindsets. Study 2 revealed that all motivational subcomponents, except opportunity costs, relate to SRL promotion. Teachers’ success expectancies are the strongest predictor, but values and opportunity costs also predict metacognition promotion, with interaction effects between attainment values and success expectancies. Study 3 showed that teachers’ SRL promotion relates to students’ SRL motivation at the personal and class level. Further, teachers’ success expectancies are indirectly linked to students’ motivation, but only when student-reported SRL promotion is included. Finally, the results from study 4 show that mastery and vicarious experiences stimulate teachers’ success expectancies and that this effect is stronger for teachers with less previous experience in SRL promotion.
The dissertation results contribute to a more nuanced picture of different subcomponents of teachers’ motivation to promote SRL, their relation to personal characteristics, and students’ motivation and development. These results allow conclusions about the implications for in- and pre-service teacher training and future research to understand better teachers' decisions to promote SRL in school.