Teacher professionalization: Motivational factors and the influence of age

Abstract

This study examines motivational factors of teachers who have achieved a national standard of professionalization. Data were collected from National Board certified teachers in the United States (N = 453) using a two-part, web-based survey. Exploratory factor analysis found five motivators: improved teaching, financial gain, collaborative opportunities, self and external validation. Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) highlighted differences in the financial gain and external validation motivations, depending on the teacher’s age at the time of certification. The results of this study reveal multiple motivators for teacher professionalization, with teachers of different ages motivated by diverse incentives.

Introduction

Educational quality is heavily influenced by teacher quality. Teacher professionalization has figured prominently in the debate over teacher quality, with some encouraging teachers to go the route of other established professionals (e.g., medical doctors, lawyers, architects) while others caution against a more professionalized state for teaching. In the United States, teachers themselves can decide whether to become professionalized or not. But why would they? And are all teachers motivated by the same incentives? This article explores motivational factors for teacher professionalization and the influences of age on those factors.

Teacher professionalization is the “movement to upgrade the status, training, and working conditions of teachers,” including their credentials, induction, professional development, authority, and compensation (Ingersoll, Alsalam, Quinn, & Bobbitt, 1997, p. vii). Given the nature of teachers’ real-life working conditions and political realities, however, the ideal of teacher professionalism has become more contentious (Popkewitz, 1994). Meanwhile, teaching carries the labels of “quasi-profession” (Darling-Hammond, 1999, p. 10), “service profession” (Myers, 2008), and “craft profession” (Pratte & Rury, 1991). Defining teaching as a full profession has remained a persistent challenge in American (see Cuban, 1993, Fullan, 2001, Gitlin and Labaree, 1996, Lagemann, 2000, Lortie, 1975, Troen and Boles, 2003) and international (Day and Sachs, 2004, Hargreaves, 2001, Preston, 2001) contexts. In fact, the development of a professionalized teaching force fuels heated debate in recent educational research (Burbules and Densmore, 1991a, Burbules and Densmore, 1991b, Day and Sachs, 2004, Finnigan and Gross, 2007, Sykes, 1991).

What would motivate teachers to become professionalized, if they were given the choice? Many countries have a centralized Ministry of Education that greatly influences teachers, teaching, and the conditions that encourage or discourage teacher professionalization. The fixed nature of teacher certification in these contexts can make teacher motivation for professionalization moot, with teachers having little choice since career trajectories are fixed. In the past decade, several countries have instituted standards-based reforms affecting teachers and their professionalism. For example, the Teacher Training Agency established a multi-tiered framework for English and Welsh teachers’ development (Bolam & McMahon, 2004), while Hong Kong enacted an Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications that outlines expectations for professional teachers (Morris, 2004). The United States, conversely, has historically practiced educational policy more locally and in a “decentralized” manner (Goldhaber & Hannaway, 2009, p. 7), with states and school districts heavily shaping teaching conditions, credentials, and professional development. As a result of this state- and district-level influence on initial teacher education and later professional development, there is much more diverse teacher development in the United States than in other countries (Goldhaber, 2009, p. 96).

In the last decade, however, the United States federal government has taken a more active role in education with the call for “highly qualified” teachers (U.S. Department of Education, 2004), despite its uncommonly decentralized education policy traditions. There are also “movements toward national credentialing of teachers” (Goldhaber, 2009, p. 102), in the form of certifications from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and the American Board of Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE). Individual teachers in the United Sates can now reach a level of professionalism that was not available to their predecessors. Both certifications, however, are voluntary.

National Board (NB) certification was created to professionalize teaching, improve working conditions, award higher pay, encourage leadership, and increase job satisfaction for accomplished teachers (National Research Council, 2008, p. 26). Individual teachers spend nine to ten months and $2500 USD attempting the NB certification process (National Research Council, 2008). Why would they want to, though? It is voluntary, time-consuming, and expensive. Unsurprisingly, less than two percent of American teachers have done so since 1994 (National Research Council, 2008, p. 22), amounting to just over 82,000 teachers (NBPTS, 2009).

This article investigates the motivations of NB certified teachers in the United States to professionalize, situating the discussion in theories of teacher motivation. We operationalize teacher motivation for professionalization and explore how those motivations differ for teachers of varying ages.

Human motivation is a nebulous construct, difficult to observe and categorize. Early research posited that basic needs and instincts primarily guide human motivation (Bayer, Ferguson, & Gollwitzer, 2003), but we are far more sophisticated beings than those theories suggest. Previously framed in intrinsic/extrinsic (Deci, 1975) or instrumental/integrative dualisms (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002) and viewed as stagnant, motivation is now explained with more sophisticated models that allow for malleability over time. While the motivation literature is vast and a thorough review is beyond the scope of this article, we touch on general motivation and explore occupational and teacher motivation to situate our argument.

Locus of control substantially informs kinds and levels of motivation, along with an individual’s psychological needs. Deci (1995) posits that “self-motivation… is at the heart of creativity, responsibility, healthy behaviour, and lasting change” (p. 9, emphasis in original), while Dzubay (2001) outlines three psychological needs fundamental to teacher motivation: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (p. 5). She suggests that professional growth occurs when teachers choose their own career goals and connect or collaborate with others. Conversely, forced participation does little to enhance individual motivation and often results in counter-productive outcomes. When coerced, a person’s motivation fades and he or she may respond negatively (Dzubay, 2001). As leaders minimize their control over teachers and provide choices, they help promote teacher professionalization.

Better teaching and professional development can serve as strong motives for teacher professionalization. Within the occupational motivation literature, Hirschhorn (1993) proposes that workers learn at the workplace if that learning makes them better at their job. Although not necessarily rewarded for resulting effectiveness (Goldhaber, 2009), some teachers choose more challenging professional development opportunities that improve their teaching (Rice, 2009). The resulting psychological rewards are felt internally, connected to student results, and contribute to better teaching (Ozcan, 1996). The incentive of doing a better job may be especially important, given that more palpable incentives in the form of salary, status, work schedule, and power are not as prevalent in teaching as they may be in other jobs. Hess (2009) points out that “teaching is a less attractive profession for those who want to be recognized and rewarded on the basis of their accomplishments and hard work” (p. 130).

But internal incentives are not alone in motivating teachers. Workers are motivated by getting ahead in the organization (Hirschhorn, 1993), and recognition or validation from others, along with career advancement and enhanced leadership, can serve as powerful incentives for teachers. Honorific rewards come from external sources and may involve “social honour, prestige or recognition” (Ozcan, 1996, p. 15). That honour may originate from the profession itself, students, administrators, other teachers, or parents, among others (Johnson, 1990). Political rewards in teaching revolve around teachers’ abilities to make decisions and affect their surroundings (Ozcan, 1996, p. 20). The paradigm of schools as factories and teachers as factory workers (Johnson, 1990) has plagued the American educational system for over a century, with efficiency the prime objective and administrators making decisions for teachers and students. Teachers, however, prefer greater freedom to higher efficiency (Lortie, 1975) and seek to influence the school and greater society (Kottkamp, Provenzo, & Cohn, 1986).

Finally, direct personal gain may serve as an impetus for teacher professionalization. Ozcan (1996) proposes that teacher motivation can increase with greater opportunities for economic rewards. This area of exploration is interesting since teaching has been called a “flat career” (Troen & Boles, 2003, p. 73). In the United States and many other industrialized countries, nearly all promotions and pay raises are based on degrees earned and years of experience (Troen & Boles, 2003) instead of teacher effectiveness (Goldhaber, 2009), partly because of the slippery nature of its measurement. Further complicating teacher compensation, the pension system exists as a delayed financial incentive for staying in teaching. Younger teachers, however, tend to be more mobile and may be penalized since “the benefits in teacher pension systems are heavily back-loaded (i.e., they accrue to teachers disproportionately in the last years of teaching)” (Costrell, Johnson, & Podgursky, 2009, p. 195). Financial gains in teaching are difficult, but NB certification provides some means of increasing teacher salary and bypassing the traditional teacher pay scale system (Cavalluzzo, 2004).

Aging is of interest within the teacher motivation literature, including changes in attitude toward the profession (Lipka & Goulet, 1979) and rates of burnout (Zabel & Zabel, 2001). Although Lipka and Goulet (1979) found minimal differences in motivation among teachers of different ages, Kuhlen and Johnson (1952) found that younger teachers expressed higher needs for achievement, while older teachers expressed a higher need for power. Zabel and Zabel (1983) discovered that younger teachers faced a larger threat of burnout than their older peers. Their later study (2001), however, was less straightforward, with age having no significant correlation on some components of teacher burnout. Further complicating the matter, Perrachione, Rosser, and Peterson (2008) reported that age did not explain why teachers did or did not remain in the teaching profession. That lack of congruity prompted this study of age-related influences on motivations for professionalization.