The relation between teachers' motivation and enthusiasm in ELT: A descriptive study

When enthusiasm and motivation in education are considered, the concern is usually students' enthusiasm and motivation for learning. However, enthusiasm and motivation for teaching are more critical (Baum, 2002), since a teacher's involvement, excitement and motivation in the teaching process correlatively help students' learning process. According to Brophy (1998), the most important reason for lack of success in schools is low motivation among teachers and students. In order to activate the teaching and learning process, teacher enthusiasm is needed; that is, a teacher should be highly motivated, enthusiastic, willing, creative, inspirational and modernist. A study by Atkinson (2000) shows that rather than teachers' professional competence, their motivation levels play a more important role in students' learning. In these circumstances, the question is: are specified professional qualifications and credentials from a university or a college, the study of pedagogy, curriculum or a lesson plan enough in providing language teachers with qualified teaching enthusiasm and high motivation to teach? Albert Einstein states that 'the most important motive for work in schools and in life is the pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community (Jaynes, Wlodkowski, 1990 p.3). In order to catch both the highest motivation and enthusiasm with pleasure while teaching English as a foreign language, the aim of this study, besides finding out, understanding and analyzing what factors affect teacher motivation of English language instructors and what elements of teacher motivation and de-motivation are reflected in the behaviors of English language instructors, is also to discover what attitudes are observed when teachers are motivated and enthusiastic as teachers while teaching English as a foreign language and the relation between their teacher motivation and enthusiasm. For that purpose, two different questionnaires consisting of 27 items pertaining to teachers' motivation and enthusiasm were administered to 40 English language instructors teaching English at public universities in South Anatolia Region of Turkey. Besides the quantitative data, qualitative data was also collected. In order to attain reliability in the study, triangulation was applied with classroom observations, teacher diaries and interviews. The data obtained was analyzed through SPSS, a statistical program for the social sciences and content analysis. The results show that although internal and background life factors had some effect on teacher motivation of English language instructors, external factors such as the institution and city where instructors taught, the students and the classroom facilities did also affect their teacher motivation. Moreover, the results of teacher enthusiasm questionnaire show that even if teachers were not motivated to teach, they tried to display enthusiastic attitudes in order to draw learners' the attention. Keywords: Teachers' motivation, teachers' enthusiasm, motivation