Abstract
The present study aimed to explore autonomy orientations of English language teachers' work at an intensive language school in Turkey. The autonomy orientations of the teachers were analysed through self-determination theory. The study also investigated if these orientations vary according to the teachers’ gender, years of experience, and department of graduation. The investigation was carried out through an autonomy orientations questionnaire. Data were collected from 111 language teachers, 11 of whose opinions were utilized for further analysis. The results showed that teachers had moderate autonomy supportive orientation, which was reported to be risky. Moreover, gender was the only variable that had a significant effect on the autonomy orientations. The teachers mainly blamed the education system for restricting their adoption of the autonomous orientations. The results imply the necessity of explicit training on how teachers can be encouraged to have more autonomy supporting orientations.
Highlights
Motivation is the moving power behind every decision that human beings take, and it is widely recognized for its importance in the education research field (Gardner, 1985)
The distribution of the autonomy orientations of language teachers obtained from 111 participants is presented in Table 1 below
It should be mentioned that the majority of the teachers had a positive score on the Autonomy Orientation Questionnaire, which meant that autonomy-supportive orientations dominated the controlling ones
Summary
Motivation is the moving power behind every decision that human beings take, and it is widely recognized for its importance in the education research field (Gardner, 1985). It has been put forward that motivation is a very critical factor in determining the effort and energy that learners put into learning activities (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 1979; Maehr, 1984; Pintrich et al, 1993).Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory (SDT) focuses on human motivation and its sources as well as the environment’s effects on human motivation.Selfdetermined people are known to take responsibility and make choices about their lives, set their own goals, and do whatever is necessary to reach those goals without being forced by anyone else. Controlling teaching styles hinder students’ chances to express themselves (Assor, Kaplan, Kanat-Maymon, & Roth, 2005).It is known that while studying in a high-pressure environment, students are not able to provide their own solutions and choose what to do or how to do (Reeve, 2002; Reeve, Bolt, & Cai, 1999; Reeve & Jang, 2006)
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