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It’s the little things: exploring the importance of commonplace events for early-career teachers’ motivation

Kitching, Karl, Morgan, Mark and O'Leary, Michael ORCID: 0000-0002-6771-904X (2009) It’s the little things: exploring the importance of commonplace events for early-career teachers’ motivation. Teachers and Teaching, 15 (1). pp. 43-58. ISSN 1354-0602

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Abstract

This paper seeks to provide a rationale for further researching the everyday events that keep teachers motivated or that discourage them. We put forward the idea that routine Affect Triggering Incidents (ATIs) are an important area for researchers to investigate in terms of how they impact teacher motivation and resilience. Two groups of participants in separate consecutive studies kept weekly diaries of incidents that made them feel good or bad about themselves in their work as teachers (Study 1) and added weekly inventories of their commitment to teaching as well as measures of self-efficacy and self-esteem (Study 2). An analysis of the ATIs in these diaries revealed that student engagement and student achievement are major factors in incidents triggering regular positive feelings while students’ behaviour and perceived difficulties around home influences are major factors in regular dissatisfaction. These everyday ATIs are important in the sense that they correlate significantly with measures of commitment to teaching, especially in the case of positive ATIs.

Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:emotions; affect; motivation; diary methods; self-esteem; selfefficacy; commitment to teaching
Subjects:Social Sciences > Education
Social Sciences > Teaching
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Institute of Education > School of Policy & Practice
Publisher:Routledge (Taylor & Francis)
Official URL:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13540600802661311
Copyright Information:This is an electronic version of an article published in Teachers and Teaching & is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13540600802661311
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
ID Code:21571
Deposited On:21 Dec 2016 11:18 by Thomas Murtagh . Last Modified 02 Mar 2022 12:45

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