Teachers or Lecturers? The Motivational Profile of University Teachers of English

Abstract

This qualitative study addresses a largely neglected area within motivation research: teacher motivation. It reports on a small-scale investigation with two main purposes. The first is to find out if university teachers see themselves as teachers or lecturers; the second is to explore what motivates or demotivates them to behave as teachers and teach interactive, student-centered seminars. In order to collect data, I conducted in-depth interviews with seven lecturers and also observed a seminar taught by each of them. The data analysis followed the principles of the constant comparative method (Maykut & Moreouse, 1994). In the process of analysis, teachers and lecturers turned out to be motivated by different factors; teachers seem to be intrinsically, while lecturers mostly extrinsically motivated to teach. However, demotivating factors seemed to follow a common pattern in the case of both groups. The research further supports previous evidence on the dominance of intrinsic motives in the profession (e.g., Doyle & Kim, 1999; Kassabgy, Boraie, & Schmidt, 2001) and also provides some suggestions on how to motivate teachers and students.