Initial Career Motives and Demotivation of English Language Teachers in Turkish Context

The purpose of the present study is to find out initial career motives and demotivation of English language teachers working in Turkish context. 30 teachers working at high state schools participated in the current study. Initial career motives and demotivation questionnaires adopted from Kim & Kim (2015) were applied to the participants. Initial career motives questionnaire has four factors: global orientation, job security, altruism, and ought-to-self, each one represented by 3 or 4 items. Demotivation questionnaire have three factors as: obstacles to communicate language teaching, inadequate administrative support, and lack of social recognition. In addition to the questionnaires, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 3 of the participants. The descriptive statistics of each factor was presented by the tables and supported by qualitative data. The result of the study showed that with regard to the initial motives of teachers, global orientation found to be the most important reason of being an English teacher followed by job security, altruism and ought-to-self, respectively. With regard to the demotivating factors, inadequate administrative support was found to be the most influential factor decreasing teachers' motivation. The findings of the study were compared with the findings of the previous similar studies.