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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The relationship between teachers' work motivation and classroom goal orientation

subject

description

We investigated the relationship between teachers’ work motivation and their self-reported endorsement of mastery goals - i.e. goals focusing on learning and effort-, instead of performance goals - i.e. goals focusing on competition-, in the classroom. 154 secondary school teachers in the Netherlands completed a questionnaire on background characteristics, work motivation, and classroom goal structures. We found that teachers with higher levels of autonomous motivation, scored high on their self-reported endorsement of mastery goals. Controlled motivation was a significant predictor of performance goals, but not of mastery goals. In contrast, autonomous motivation was found to be a small yet significant predictor of mastery goals. Additional analyses also indicated the importance of background characteristics such as gender, teaching experience in years and educational track. Our study shows that teachers’ motivation for their work significantly relates to the goals they reported for their pupils in their classroom.