The aim of our paper is to investigate teacher trainees’ teaching motivation and influence of blogging on motivation during teaching practice.
According to Richardson and Watt (2006) there are problems in Australia, European countries, USA and U.K. that teachers’ cadres are aging rapidly. So, people from the younger age groupings will need to be attracted into teaching. At the same time negative representations of teachers’ work in the mass media, political ideology, and shifts in public opinion all have an impact on the popularity and reputation of teaching as a career choice (Watt & Richardson, 2008). In such conditions it is important to know what future teachers think about their work and what motivates them.
As several studies in European countries show the most frequent reasons for career choice among teachers was a desire to work with children and adolescents, the potential for the job to provide for intellectual fulfilment, and a means by which to make a social contribution (OECD, 2005). Sinclair (2008) has studied student teachers’ motivations and their commitment to teaching after their first practicum. In addition to before mentioned she presented among the most common reasons a positive self-evaluation of their capabilities to be teachers. She has found that motivation and commitment changed to some extent over the first semester of initial teacher education, particularly as a result of the first practicum.
Some more extrinsic motivations such as salary, job security, and career status are found to be important motivations for choosing a teacher career (see Watt & Richardson, 2008). So, motivation sources for choosing teacher work are different and may be changed by several factors. It is quite possible to expect that the first teaching experience got during teaching practice can have an impact on teacher trainees’ motivation.
We have seen in blogging the additional possibility for teacher trainees for self-reflection and sharing their experiences with other students during teaching practice. A blog is one kind of social software that is increasingly employed to enhance communication environments in the educational domain (Kim, 2008), which is an efficient tool for sharing knowledge and experiences as well as expressing feelings and thoughts (Stiller & Philleo, 2003; Wang & Chuang, 2008; Hsua, 2008). Ability to share feelings and thoughts is important for supporting teacher trainees (Capa Aydin, Woolfolk Hoy, 2005). The result of the research indicates that blogging during the practice influences positively teachers trainees self-efficacy (Luik, Taimalu, Õim, 2009). Therefore the question arises: does the blogging influence the teacher trainees motivation as well.
The first hypothesis was that, during the teaching practice, the bloggers´ intrinsic motivation, success expectancy and goal-setting would rise. The second hypothesis was that non-bloggers’ success expectancy would rise, but intrinsic motivation and goal-setting would remain relatively constant during the teaching practice. The third hypothesis was that external motivation would remain relatively constant during the teaching practice in both groups.
