Vocational teachers’ classroom management style: the role of motivation to teach and sense of responsibility

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine the links between motivation to become a teacher, sense of responsibility, and classroom management style. An adapted version of the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT)-Choice scale, a translated version of the Teacher Responsibility scale, and a vignette instrument inspired by the Problems in School Questionnaire were administered to 154 in-service vocational teachers. Consistent with prior research, path analysis of the data indicated that social utility value for teaching was the most consistent predictor of teachers’ sense of responsibility. However, the key motivation predicting responsibility for teaching was intrinsic value, which in turn predicted teachers’ endorsement of classroom management styles. The more vocational teachers felt responsible for the quality of their teaching, the more they tended to endorse adaptive or beneficial classroom management styles (autonomy support and structure). Implications for research and teaching are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher responsibility
• motivation to become a teacher
• classroom management
• teachers’ interpersonal motivating style

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Classroom management styles, or motivating styles, are interpersonal sentiments and behaviours teachers provide during instruction. Each style is associated with specific instructional practices (Reeve 2009). Classroom goal structures refer to the various classroom- and school-level policies and practices that make mastery or performance goal salient, as well as the explicit goal-related messages teachers communicate to their students (Kaplan et al. 2002).

2. Although this theory focuses on student achievement rather than on student motivation, it was deemed appropriate to enlighten the association between sense of responsibility and teacher motivation.

3. To our knowledge, there is no research studying the differences between sense of responsibility when teaching children vs young adults, or when teaching general education vs speciality. We consider these hypotheses to be relevant based on our knowledge of our context and of vocational teachers, who we train in our institution.

4. In Switzerland, vocational education and training is the most popular educational track after compulsory schooling. Two out of three young people pursue an apprenticeship (Swiss Federal Statistical Office 2017), for the majority of them in a dual form – that is, by spending one or two days per week at a vocational school and the rest of the week at a training company. This dual training system allows apprentices to learn a trade by focusing on the practical side of it while developing the necessary theoretical and general knowledge.

5. Survey was deemed the most appropriate method to gather data given the sample size and the importance of anonymity for limiting social desirability bias.

6. In comparison, a two-factor model (factor 1: autonomy support and control, factor 2: structure and chaos) inadequately fitted the data: χ²(133) = 306.65, p <.001, CFI =.58, RMSEA = .09.

To investigate convergent validity, the correlations were observed between the vignettes and two other scales: the Psychologically Controlling Teaching scale (PCT; Soenens et al. 2012) and the Behaviour and Instructional Management Scale (BIMS; Martin and Sass 2010). As expected, control correlated positively (r(153) =.52, p <.001) with the PCT Scale, while autonomy support correlated negatively (r(153) = –.19, p=.02). Furthermore, structure correlated positively with the two dimensions of the BIMS: behaviour management (r(153) =.33, p <.001) and instructional management (r(153) =.24, p <.001). Chaos did not significantly correlate with either behaviour management or instructional management. In order to gauge this instrument’s sensitivity to socially desirable responding, two scales based on Paulhus’ (1984) conceptualisation of socially desirable responding were administered. A significant but rather small correlation between the autonomy support score and impression management was found: r(153) =.22, p <.01. No other significant correlations between social desirability and vignette scores were found. This indicates that the vignette instrument is relatively independent of social desirability.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [100019_146351].