Introduction: Motivation plays a central role in teachers’ instructional practices. Teaching quality and teacher effectiveness contribute positively to student achievement. In line with this, teachers face several tasks in their profession, and they exhibit various motivational levels consisting of different motivational constructs, such as intrinsic, introjected, identified, external motivation, and amotivation. Therefore, this study aims at revealing Turkish EFL teachers’ motivations towards the work tasks of class preparation, teaching, and evaluation of students, which all teachers have to conduct in their profession.
Methods: To collect data, Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers was used. The sample consisted of 1786 EFL teachers teaching throughout Turkey in all types of schools and locations across seven geographical regions.
Results: The quantitative data revealed that motivational constructs vary according to the work tasks of class preparation, teaching, and evaluation of students indicating that teacher motivation has a multifaceted nature and is a non-uniform construct.
Discussion: The results indicated that Turkish EFL teachers did not value the task of classroom preparation, while the task of evaluation of students seemed to be valued. Gender-based differences also indicated that female teachers had higher amotivation and external regulation levels towards classroom preparation and teaching despite their higher levels of intrinsic motivation towards evaluation of students. In addition, considering age variable, the younger group of EFL teachers were found to be more intrinsically motivated towards teaching and evaluation of students compared to the older groups while being more amotivated towards the task of classroom preparation.
Limitations: Despite the high number of the participants, the findings of the study are limited to the analyses of quantitative data as the main source.
Conclusions: The findings of the study indicated that EFL teachers working in all regions and cities of Turkey demonstrated high levels of a) amotivation towards classroom preparation, b) introjected regulation towards teaching, and c) intrinsic motivation towards evaluation of students. Moreover, EFL teachers’ work task motivations displayed variations based on their gender, their age, the location and the type of their school. Further research could investigate potential reasons for the differences in EFL teachers’ motivation levels while further increasing the reliability of the results by integrating qualitative data through interviews, observations, or teacher diaries.
