Yabancı dil olarak İngilizce öğretmen adaylarının ARCS motivasyon modeline göre derse ilgileri üzerine bir durum çalışması

Motivation is a phenomenon studied in many different disciplines, from marketing to education; and it has always been considered among the most important factors affecting achievement and success of the individuals. In education, it is believed that motivation helps to attract the learners' attention for the course, enables learners to learn more easily, and sustains the learning process in the long run. From this perspective, this issue has attracted the attention of the educational researchers for a very long period. The relationship between motivation and other concepts, like self-efficacy beliefs, burnout levels, academic achievements, have also been studied; and in this kind of studies, it was aimed at finding the ways of increasing motivation of the learners, which leads to academic achievement in the end. The present study is designed as a mixed method case study to examine the course interest levels of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers (PTs) towards the three course categories – field knowledge courses, professional knowledge courses and the general knowledge courses – offered at the Department of Foreign Language Education in the context of the present study according to the ARCS Motivational Model. The participant group of this study was composed of senior PTs (N=63) enrolled at the Department of Foreign Language Education, Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University in the Fall Semester of the 2017-2018 Educational Year. In order to gather data from the participants, Course Interest Survey, developed by Keller (2010), was used to examine the course interest levels of PTs in three course categories. In the first category, they were asked to respond to the intended survey for field knowledge courses, then in the second category, they were asked to reflect on professional knowledge courses, and finally they responded for general knowledge courses. After the collection of the quantitative data, a group of PTs were interviewed using semi-structured interview questions in order to better understand the responses obtained through the survey. The results of the analyses indicated that the course interest levels of PTs were at or above the average score for each course category, which was quite positive. However, there were differences in the mean scores of PTs for the course categories. They were more interested in the field knowledge courses when compared to the professional knowledge courses and the general knowledge courses; and they were more interested in the professional knowledge courses than the general knowledge courses. These differences were also analyzed, and it was observed that the differences were significant (p<0.05). The analyses were conducted for the subcategories of ARCS Motivational Model – attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction – as well. It was found that the mean scores for the field knowledge courses, professional knowledge courses and the general knowledge courses were statistically significant (p<0,05) for all subscales, except for the confidence. As for the confidence, the difference between the mean scores of field knowledge courses and professional knowledge courses were not found to be significant. The findings of this study might be helpful for the policymakers at tertiary level of education, the teacher educators at teacher education programs and the PTs studying at the Foreign Language Education Departments. As the follow-up of this research, some implementations could be put into practice in order to motivate the PTs for all categories of courses to motivate PTs in teacher education programs.