An Empirical Study Of The Development Of Novice English Teachers' Teaching Motivation In Senior High School

In recent years,scholars at home and abroad have started to pay special attention to teacher motivation.It has become a new research focus in the field of teacher education.Teacher motivation,as an important component of the emotional dimensions of teacher professional development,plays a significant role in motivating teachers to engage in teaching and devoting themselves to a life-long teaching.However,few studies have been carried out to explore the motivational dynamics of foreign language teachers at different professional development stages.Thereby,on the basis of Complex Dynamic System Theory(CDST)and with four novice English teachers in senior high school as an example,this study aims at exploring the motivators,development trajectories and influencing factors of their teaching motivation by adopting the methodology of longitudinal case study.Accordingly,this study attempts to address the following three questions:(1)What motivates novice English teachers in senior high school to teach?(2)How does the teaching motivation change over time? What are the development trajectories?(3)What are the influencing factors affecting the change of teaching motivation?In hope of answering the above mentioned research questions,this study employed a mixed method.The researcher used semi-structured interview,self-report and observation as qualitative research instruments together with the rating scale of teaching motivation changes as quantitative research instruments.This study lasted for 4 months and the participants in this study involved four novice English teachers with less than 5 years of teaching experience.On the basis of detailed analysis and discussion of qualitative and quantitative data,this study yielded the following research findings:Firstly,the teaching motivation of novice English teachers in senior high school consists of 18 motivators in terms of entry motivation,retention motivation and involvement motivation.In addition,their teaching motivation is an interplay result among intrinsic motivators,extrinsic motivators,and altruistic motivators.Furthermore,the various motivators of teaching motivation are interrelated andinteractive.Secondly,as far as the development trajectories are concerned,the short-term development trajectories of teaching motivation for the four novice English teachers in senior high school present dynamic changes,but the varying degree of each motivator indicates imbalance and the whole development trend shows individual difference.Meanwhile,teaching motivation of the four novice English teachers in senior high school shows sensitivity to the initial conditions.Finally,this study identified four major factors which affect the change of teaching motivation of four novice English teachers in senior high school.They are student factors,work factors,interpersonal relationship factors,and teacher factors.More importantly,this finding proved that teaching motivation as a dynamic system is open with the feature of interaction with other systems.This study is an in-depth analysis for the motivators,development trajectories and influencing factors of novice English teachers' teaching motivation in senior high school.It will be helpful to reveal the influence of individual psychological factors on teachers' professional development.It can provide some enlightenments for teacher education and professional development.