Midterm Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Midterm - Essay Example Teachers who scored high in the survey were contacted through an individual interview, which was a blend of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This study increased the research about motivation among teachers, and supported future studies related to motivation among teachers in urban schools and the influence of demographic characteristics upon their decision to stay. Central questions that this study sought to answer were: Are science teachers in urban setting intrinsically motivated about persisting in urban schools? Do years of experience/race affect science teachers’ motivation (autonomy, relatedness, and competence)? How the decision to stay was affected by science teachers’ practice and identity? These questions were answered based on results of the Intrinsic Motivation Study. The results of this study suggested that teachers have intrinsic motivation as well as extrinsic motivation. It was found that years of experience and ethnicity did not affect teachers†™ motivation to stay and teach in urban schools. Chapter 5 provides a full account of the data and results of the study. The following paragraphs provide a summary of the findings of the study, discussion, implications, and recommendations for future research. Interpretation of Findings Survey The majority of teachers did not agree on reporting which intrinsic motivation factors were more important to them. There might be other motivational reasons (extrinsic or intrinsic) that result in their job persistence. In this study, I only investigated the autonomy, relatedness, and competence among science teachers. I recommend future researchers to do compression between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation among teachers, which will give a better vision about the motivational factors. Next, findings from the analyses revealed that none of the dependent variables were impacted by the independent variable. The results from ANOVA indicated that it could not attribute differences in intrinsi c motivation and working experience to either ethnicity or teaching experience. The independent variables that were studied did not significantly affect the majority of science teachers’ intrinsic motivation. In terms of years of experience, the findings came to an understanding of Huang and Moon (2009), who found that after 21 years of teaching experience, student achievement dropped. In this study, 36.2% selected a general response, indicating more than 15 years of teaching experience. Also, The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certification found that many teachers were still in the stage of gaining proficiency and improving their effectiveness after an average of 11 years of teaching. So, experience might not be a precise variable to test competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Hence, it is recommended for future researches to find the experience more valuable by conducting such a study which compares beginners with stayers. In terms of the ethnic ity, the majority of teachers were white as 68.1% of them indicated having White/Caucasian ethnicity. The high percentage of Caucasian ethnicity was likely to bias the data; however, my data supported The National Education Association (2007), which reported that more than 38% of schools across America do not have teachers of color in