Opening up ‘spaces for manoeuvre’: English teacher perspectives on learner motivation

Abstract

This qualitative study explores teachers’ perspectives on learner motivation for English in Chilean secondary schools. Drawing both on motivation theories and on concepts related to teacher cognition, autonomy and agency, the analysis of 19 semi-structured interviews with Chilean English teachers sheds light on the difficulties that many teachers have in motivating their students so that they engage in classroom activities and learning. Findings show that teachers with a developed sense of agency report higher levels of learner motivation. Salient features of their accounts are classroom practices that grant students immediate positive experiences while learning English, rather than referring to future benefits. Other features are autonomous learning tasks, and a context-appropriate, empowering selection of cultural contents. The discussion suggests that teachers need to develop a sound sense of agency to identify ‘spaces to manoeuvre’ between external constraints, such as curricular policies or lack of parental support, and possible internal constraints, such as paralysing beliefs about their own competence or a limited cultural repertoire to draw on in order to make English lessons motivating and meaningful for their students. For improved learner motivation and meaningful learning, research needs to support teachers’ autonomy in times of increasing curricular regulation and standardisation of knowledge.

Keywords:

• learner motivation
• teacher agency
• English language teaching
• motivational strategies
• Chile

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participating teachers for sharing their experiences and ideas with me. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewer for the insightful and helpful dialogue with this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The data shown here are also part of a doctoral study that explored the Chilean context for teaching English, with an emphasis on teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity, student motivation and pertinent learning contents (Glas 2013).

2. The educational reform of 2014 proposes phasing out additional fees for schools that receive state subsidies.

3. In Chile, secondary education comprises the last four years of compulsory schooling (years 9–12).

4. Apart from the interviews, data collection for the wider research framework of the doctoral study included written documents, such as governmental curricular guidelines and textbooks, which were analysed in order to determine the opportunities for identification and motivation these elements granted to students, and to triangulate these data with the teachers’ interview responses.

5. Pseudonyms were used to protect the identity of the participants.