1. Ali Karakaş, PhD Mehmet Akif Ersoy University Burdur, Turkey
Embarking on the career of English teaching: student teachers’ motivational orientations and perceptions
Ali Karakaş, PhD
Mehmet Akif Ersoy University
Burdur, Turkey
1. International Academic Research Congress – November Sueno Bach Hotel Side, Antalya

2. Outline Introduction Background to the study Research aims
Conceptual framework
The study
Research design
Setting and participants
Data collection & analysis
Results & Discussion
Final remarks
Outline

3. INTRODUCTION Background to the study
Teachers’ importance for the society
“quality teachers and teaching are central to the development and maintenance of an intelligent, informed citizenry” (Richardson & Watt, 2006, p. 27)
Rapid increase in the number of ELT programs
Currently, more than 40 universities offer an ELT program – BA level (OSYM, 2016)
Growing interest in becoming an Langauge Teacher (LT)
Despite the surplus of teacher supply in some teacher education programs, there are severe shortages of LTs.
High number of high school students wishing to be a LT.
Given that students come from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, it is highly likely that they will not have the same motivational orientations in chooing to study in an ELT program and becoming a language teacher.

4. INTRODUCTION Research rationale
Discovering student teachers’ motivational orientations and reasons for chosing ELT is important
to identifty their initial motivation for choosing to become a LT (choosing a teacher career willingly or unwillingly – teaching quality)
for teacher trainers to exert influence on student teachers’ professional development, engagement, and commitment (Bruinsma & Jansen, 2010)
Scarcity of research:
Context-specific positioning; case study; different and contradictory results – nature of the data collection instrument
Perceptions of ELT as a career – the language to be taught – rarely explored in student teacher motivation research
An unwilling choice of field of study may cause even more serious problems for teachers’ future work lives.
Identifying student teachers’ motivaitonal orientations – teacher educators will impact upon teaching quality.

5. INTRODUCTION Research aims
to explore teacher students’ motivational orientations towards and perceptions about choosing language teaching as a career.
o contribute to teacher motivation research in the following ways:
qualitative instrument
mapping the conventional motivation theory on expectancy value theory.
Not only explores the reasons behind choosing ELT as a career but also percpetions regarding the profession and the langauge itself

6. Conceptual Framework
Conventional categories of motivational orientations
Altruistic reasons ... deal with seeing teaching as a socially worthwhile and important job, a desire to help society improve.
Intrinsic reasons ... cover aspects of the job activity itself, such as the activity of teaching children, and an interest in using their subject matter knowledge and expertise.
Extrinsic reasons ... cover aspects of the job which are not inherent in the work itself, such as long holidays, level of pay, and status.
(Kyriacou, Hultgren, & Stephens, 1999, p. 374)
Extrinsic motives (e.g. salary, lengthy holidays)
Intrinsic motives (e.g. Personal interest, experience, intellectual fulfilment)
Altruistic motives (e.g. Wishing to contribute to the society, others’ intellectual growth) (Moran et al., 2001)

7. Conceptual Framework
‘Factors Influencing Teaching Choice’ (FIT-Choice) scale - Richardson and Watt (2005, 2006)
Constituting motivational factors
Ability
Intrinsic career value
Fallback career (secondary choice)
Personal utility value (job security, time for family, job transferability, bludging <easy job>
Social utility value (shaping the future of children/ adolescents; enhancins social equity, making a social contribution; working with children and adolsecents)
Prior teaching and learning experiences
Social influences

8. THE STUDY Participants & setting
36 year-one ELT students, studying at a young state university in the province of Burdur, Turkey – Mehmet Akif Ersoy University
Gender breakdown: 23 F / 13 M

9. Data collection
&
Analysis
- through reflective essays written by students in the second week of the 2016/17 school year as part of a course requirement- Advance Reading and Writing I
- an essay explaning why they chose the ELT program and wished to be a LT. Each essay: around 300 words
A mixture of
Qualitative content analysis (QCA) (Miles et al., 2014; Schreier, 2012)
‘subjective interpretation of the content of the text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns’ (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1278).
Steps: (i) transcribing the data, (ii) pre-coding and coding, (iii) growing ideas, and (iv) interpreting the data and drawing conclusions
Quantitative content analysis : quantitative description of the manifest content of the text data, e.g. calculating the frequency of a particular content element.
Data collection
&
Analysis
Bottom-up coding:
Emergent themes were identified within students’ essays.

10. Motivational orientations (Broad categorization)
RESULTS & DISCUSSION
Motivational orientations
(Broad categorization)
(100 %)
(11,4 %)
(37,5%)
Sütun1
Intrinsic reasons 51,1
Extrinsic reasons 37,5
Altruistic reasons 11,4
(51,1%)

11. RESULTS & DISCUSSION Motivational orientations (Narrow categorization)
Ability
Intrinsic career value
Fallback career (secondary choice)
Personal utility value (job security f=5, time for family F=NA, job transferability f=NA, bludging <easy job> f= NA
Social utility value (shaping the future of children/ adolescents f=2; enhancins social equity f=NA, making a social contribution f=8; working with children and adolsecents f=5)
Prior teaching and learning experiences
Social influences (significant others f=6, religious purpose f=1)
Extrinsic career value
Linguistic and social status of English in Turkey and the world
Personal interest in foreign languages/cultures
Loving the subject material itself
Loving teaching itself
Opportunities for linguistic / personal development
Not having ability for other subjects
Total 1 7 5 15 2 8 3 13 4

12. Social utility value Making a social contribution f=8
S26. Because I want to improve children’s English in Turkey.
S33. In my country, most of the people don’t like English and I want to change this.
Shaping the future of children/ adolescents f=2
S3. I want to teach students. I want to help students to learn something. I will teach them in a specific way. I don’t want only to be a teacher. I want to be such a guide or friend or something in this way. It makes me happy when I know that someone is learning from me. Being a teacher means you’re responsible the future of a student because you’re the most important person in their lives, who forms the basics. Maybe, thanks to a teacher, this student will get very successful in the future.
Working with children and adolscents f=5)
28. I love children and I love teaching or telling something to anyone.

13. Personal interest in foreign languages/cultures
16. I want to be an English language teacher because I like learning a new language. Also, I can be happy by learning different cultures. I think that I can gain new viewpoints by learning a new language.
35. It also lets you understand different cultures. It also leads you to start learning different languages because you start to get interested in different cultures and languages.
Loving the subject material itself
15. I would love to be an English language teacher because I love both English language and teaching it.
20. I want to be an English teacher because when I was at middle and high school, English was my favourite lesson and I liked it too much.

14. Perceptions of the field of profession and the language to be taught
Developing language skills
Loving children
amusing job
Dream job
Communicating with linguistically and cultural diverse people
Instrumental
Favorable
Loving teaching
Landing a job easily
Loving the subject matter itself
Helping others/someone
High status
Making a change – attitudes towards English and the way it is taught
International language spoken all around the world
World language = prestige

15. CONCLUSIONS
students alluded to more intrinsic reasons for becoming a LT with a couple of student teachers who chose it as a fallback career.
Student teachers were driven by a range of interrelated intrinsic, socio-cultural and extrinsic motivational factors influencing their career choices,
Social-utility value factors: a more prominent source of career motivation (e.g. making social contribution to students’ linguistc development, the society; shaping students’ future, etc)
most students are aware of the current low level of Turkish people’s (mostly students) English proficiency – claiming responsiblity to change the current situtation relating to language teaching.
Favorable and instrumental perceptions:
This is promising for the field and can be a valuable asset for the education of future generations since intrinsic motivation is often characterized by higher levels of achievement and enthusiasm for the practice of teaching.
Measures, however, need to be taken to keep such intrinsic motivation afresh and long-lived for further professional development and maintenance of quality-oriented teacher behaviours.