Grit, mindset, and intrinsic motivation of secondary school educators and factors that contribute to a desire to impact students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between secondary school teachers' age, years of teaching experience, or sex and their grit, mindset, and intrinsic motivation, and their desire to influence the lives of students.;This is a mixed methods partially dominant research based dissertation. The quantitative research focused on the degree of grit, type of mindset, and level of intrinsic motivation in secondary school teachers and the relationship to years of teaching experience, age, and gender. The data were collected via a four part survey: demographics, grit survey, mindset survey, and intrinsic motivation survey. The qualitative research consisted of semi-structured interviews of eight secondary school teachers. The interview questions focused on developmental influences and values that align to grit, mindset, and intrinsic motivation and the locus of control for self-determination. The qualitative research also targeted the motivation of the teachers for entering into education and how they feel they contribute to changing the lives of students. The survey had 110 respondents with 67% being female, 38.2% aged 31-40, and 34.5% aged 41-50. The mean grit score was 3.82 (Scale 1-5 high), mean mindset score of 3.9 (1-5 scale, 5 high) and intrinsic motivation score of 58.5 (Scale 1-70, 70 high). Grit, mindset, and intrinsic motivation were separately compared to years of teaching experience and again to age via One-Way ANOVA. None of the six tests yielded statistically significant results. The same tests were conducted with the addition of sex and separately analyzed using Two-Way ANOVA. The tests did not yield statistically significant results. However, there were trends of significance. In most instances, males' mean scores decreased over age and years of teaching experience. Conversely, females started lower but increased with age and years of teaching experience. Qualitative results found six emergent themes related to grit, mindset, intrinsic motivation: Influence of family, coaches or teachers to enter education, hard work is admirable and yields results, continuous self-improvement and high self-expectations, positively impacting students and the relationship with students is motivational, attitude is a choice, respect for one's school and peers and the culture of high expectations.