Investigating the relationships among teachers’ motivational beliefs, motivational regulation, and their learning engagement in online professional learning communities

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among teachers' motivational beliefs, motivational regulation, and their learning engagement in online professional learning communities. More importantly, teachers' online learning behaviors were collected and used as indicates of learning engagement. 520 teachers involved in a training program were surveyed. The results of regression analyses showed that teachers' perceived task value positively predicted their online learning engagement. Moreover, teachers' motivational regulation played a partial mediating role in the predicting power of perceived task value to learning engagement. In addition, the first half of the mediating path among perceived task value, motivational regulation, and learning engagement was moderated by teachers' self-efficacy. The moderating effect on motivational regulation was higher for teachers with a high sense of self-efficacy than those with a low sense of self-efficacy. Therefore, it was suggested to assign learning tasks that meet the needs of teachers and pay attention to the cultivation of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs to increase their learning engagement in online professional learning communities. The limitations and the future research directions were discussed.