Engaged teachers: How motivation for the teaching profession and teachers’ goal orientations shape their work engagement?

Tea Pavin Ivanec, PhD, Iris Marušić, PhD and Josip Šabić, PhD are the authors of the scientific paper “Engaged teachers: How motivation for the teaching profession and teachers’ goal orientations shape their work engagement?“. The paper is published in the “Educational Psychology “, which is indexed in Scopus (2024) in Q1.

Abstract: Recent studies on teachers’ occupational well-being and motivation strive to integrate different theoretical frameworks to explain the educational outcomes. However, findings regarding the association between teacher motivation and classroom behaviour remain inconclusive and often lack parallel perspectives from both teachers and students, suggesting that the underlying mechanisms of this relationship are still unclear. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore the relationship between motivation for choosing a teaching career and both self- and student-assessed teachers’ work engagement, considering the potential mediating role of teachers’ goal orientations. The sample included 1725 students and their 109 early-career elementary school teachers. A multilevel analysis revealed the significance of specific motives for choosing a teaching career and achievement goals for teachers’ work engagement from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. These results provide a more nuanced understanding of teachers’ occupational well-being, offering theoretical and practical implications that might be of a particular relevance for early-career teachers.

The paper is available at the link.