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Building Autonomous Learners pp 107–127Cite as

Teachers’ Motivation in the Classroom

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Abstract

Teachers’ motivation plays an important role in promoting a healthy teaching environment. Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) can provide important insight into the understanding of teachers’ motivation, including the reasons they do their work, continue to teach, experience success, and enjoy what they do. The purpose of this chapter is to review the research on teachers from a motivational perspective, while taking into consideration the role that teachers’ motivation has on their behaviors with their students. More specifically, we examine how contextual factors influence teachers and how their impressions of these factors, their need satisfaction or dissatisfaction, their motivation for teaching, their general motivation, and their psychological and behavioral outcomes are related. As such, this review could inform school administrations by demonstrating why they should take care to ensure that their teachers are supported and having a psychologically sound experience. Since this review focuses on some of the key environmental factors that are relevant to teachers, it provides school administrations some key areas they can work on to promote, within their own organizations, more motivated teaching and better outcomes for both the teachers and students.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Luc G. Pelletier & Meredith Rocchi

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  1. Luc G. Pelletier
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  2. Meredith Rocchi
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Correspondence to Luc G. Pelletier .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Inst of Edu, Singapore, Singapore

    Woon Chia Liu

  2. National Inst of Edu, Singapore, Singapore

    John Chee Keng Wang

  3. Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia

    Richard M. Ryan

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Pelletier, L.G., Rocchi, M. (2016). Teachers’ Motivation in the Classroom. In: Liu, W., Wang, J., Ryan, R. (eds) Building Autonomous Learners. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-630-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-630-0_6

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