| This study was designed to combine narrative and self-report methodologies in an investigation into qualities of motivating and de-motivating teachers. Participants wrote narratives of three of their past teachers: their first English teacher in college, their most motivating teacher, and their most de-motivating teacher, and then responded to questionnaire items about each of these same teachers. It was hypothesized that teachers who were remembered as being most motivating would be ones who were more supportive of the participants' three psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence, whereas those teachers remembered as being most de-motivating would be ones who were thwarting of these needs. It was thus expected that the forces driving educational reform in the present day---those of accountability, evaluation, and high-stakes testing---would not be mentioned as motivating for continued learning but would, if mentioned at all, be considered de-motivating. The narratives describing College English classes were analyzed with correlational methods to relate amount of support for these three needs to various motivational and learning-related outcomes.; The hypotheses were generally supported by the data. Values for variables representing the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence were found to be significantly higher for teachers described as motivating than for those described as de-motivating. Variables representing evaluation and accountability such as negative external motivators demonstrated values that were significantly higher for teachers described as de-motivating than for those described as motivating, or else did not demonstrate a significant difference. Grades used as external motivators was not found to significantly distinguish between motivating and de-motivating teachers. Positive external motivation either demonstrated significantly higher values for motivating teachers than for de-motivating teachers or else did not exhibit a significant difference. In addition, those variables representing external motivators were mentioned the least often in narratives, while variables representing psychological needs were mentioned in nearly every narrative, potentially indicating a greater level of salience for the participant-student. The implications of this study for education and for the study of motivation are discussed. |
