#Motivation Intrinsic component as a main constituent in teacher motivation

    It is a big question in the field of educational psychology that either teacher is intrinsically motivated to teach or extrinsically motivated to teach. In my opinion, both factors are important internal as well as external. A teacher can be affected by both factors intrinsic as well as extrinsic. 

    There are many pieces of research by different scholars under different theories like it has been viewed as teacher motivation can be best understood with the lens of expectancy-value theories, self-efficacy theory, goal setting theory, goal-orientation theory, and self- determination theory. 

    Some of the researches on the intrinsic component as the main constituent in teacher motivation. It is a fact that teaching is more associated with intrinsic motivation than the other factors. Intrinsic motivation is feeling that comes within, refers to a person’s behavior being motivated by internal desire instead of extrinsic. It can be best seen in the research conducted by Dinham and Scott in 2002, they conducted research over a large-scale of 2000 teachers of the three countries including England, Australia, and New Zealand. The result shows that 45 to 48 percent of teachers of three countries were agreed to the option of “I always wanted to become a teacher”. 

    It shows that majority of people were agreed to the statement that they are intrinsically motivated to choose teaching profession. In 2006 another research was conducted by Watt and Richardson on the intrinsic component as the main constituent in teacher motivation. They conducted a very large scale of survey of 1,653 pre-service teachers. 

    They found that the reason behind choosing teaching as a career is that people were intrinsically motivated to teach students and they wanted to contribute to the society. Moreover, teaching provides them intrinsic reward like the feeling of satisfaction, feeling of pride for being a teacher. 

    It can have viewed in the work of Csikszentmihalyi in 1997 who has separated two types of rewards.  First is an educational process that refers to working with student and witnessing the changes in the behavior of students leads to motivating teacher as well and second one is a subject matter that deals with when a teacher is teaching a valued subject of his/her choice it will give him/her internal satisfaction. Further, one more research is conducted by Deci and Ryan with the lens of self- determination theory on the perspective of the psychological needs of the teacher. They proposed 3 fundamental needs that are related to intrinsic motivation. The needs are mentioned below;

1.         Autonomy: It is a sense of freedom that refers to you, yourself shaping your behaviors.

2.     Relatedness. It is a sense of belongingness, that you belong to a student and the student belongs to you.

3.     Competence: It is a sense of feeling accomplished, it refers to your capabilities and proficiency. It is further divided into two categories teaching efficacy and personal efficacy.

i.                   Teaching efficacy: It refers to the teacher’s competence towards handling obstacles of students.

ii.                 Personal efficacy: It refers to the teacher’s personal praise of his/her productiveness as a teacher.

One more research has been carried out by Latham and colleagues in 1997 under the lend of goal -setting theory on the intrinsic motivation, they state that teacher will be more determined when he/she has attainable goals. They investigated that work will more motivating when it has got three things including meaningful, autonomy, feedback.

1.     It is meaningful: A teacher can perform extraordinary when he knows that whatever he/she is doing is meaningful for both students as well for him/her self. It demands a multiplicity of skills.

2.     It allows autonomy: A teacher can perform effectively when he knows all the control is given to him/her. For example, what, how, and when the task is done.

3.      It provides feedback: A teacher becomes very motivated when he/she is given positive feedback like he/she has information on outcomes.

 

Conclusion: 

        

        Teachers are a significant part of our society, so it is necessary for teachers to be motivated because they have direct influence on students. The intrinsic component is treated as a major factor in choosing teaching as one’s profession. Teaching is something associated with internal desire rather than external. So, it comes within, not form outside. 

        According to William and Forgasz, most people select teaching as profession just primarily for intrinsic rewards like internal satisfaction, pride rather than for extrinsic reward like money, social status and, working condition.