Approaches to Explore Teachers’ Beliefs About Learning Motivation A Literature Review

Abstract

Exploring teachers’ beliefs about learning motivation seems to be an important milestone for transferring research results into the everyday practice of teachers. This paper provides an overview of empirical studies on teachers’ learning motivation beliefs in order to systematize the available instruments and methods, as well as to reveal the interpretations of teachers’ beliefs with regard to learning motivation. The literature review focuses on those empirical studies that have examined in-service or pre-service teachers’ learning motivation beliefs and have been published in English-language, peer-reviewed journals up until 2020. 27 publications have met the above criteria. Based on the methods applied, these can be categorized into three groups: written questionnaire studies; face-to-face interview studies; and mixed-method studies; and the paper uses this structure to review the relevant studies. An important novelty of this literature review lies in categorizing questionnaire/interview questions and statements according to their content. As the paper concludes, teachers’ beliefs about learning motivation have yet to be operationalized, the studies under review examine several different aspects of the construct, more specifically, thirteen aspects have been identified by the paper. This literature review points out some research questions which seem to be crucial in exploring teachers’ learning motivation beliefs, and may contribute to integrating learning motivation research findings into classroom practice.