Educating the young ones to become a better citizen of the nation is a task that is considered a vital role played by the teachers. However, the idea of how teachers are motivated to perform well their job in school is a good point of interest. Being aware of what motivates the teachers in the academe could be a breaking point in developing faculty programs that surely help other teachers especially the new ones to become more self-managed and self-regulated in the teaching-learning process.

Works done in the field of motivation are of great interest to all parts of societies. Organizations making  up the society aim to develop their psychological sides. Hence, great emphasis is put on the concept of motivation. It is indispensable for educational organizations and accordingly for educational system to be affected from motivation. The people working in the components of education, elementary schools, secondary schools, and tertiary schools are affected from the concept of motivation for their organizational goals. In recent years, the amount of research carried out to determine the motivation of teachers working at educational organizations has increased (Recepo?lu et al., 2014).

Motivation is a state of empowerment having physiologic, cognitive and affective dimensions and energizing an individual for a certain goal, making him/her willing to perform an action, increasing eagerness to work, directing efforts and directly affecting the performance of workers (Ozdemir and Watt, 2010). Motivation is the sum of opinions, hopes, beliefs, desires, needs and fears of people activating them and directing their actions. Motivation is internal and external motives, desires and wishes directing, empowering and controlling people’s actions by affecting them (Güzel et al., 2020).

In educational organizations, there are two concepts mentioned as the source of motivation. These concepts are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is shaped according to the teacher’s own interest in, curiosity about and satisfaction from the assigned task. Desire, enthusiasm and willingness to do something are important sources of intrinsic motivation. When the satisfaction taken while doing a task is given the highest priority, it means that the teacher is intrinsically motivated to do the task (K?l?n, 2014). However, extrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is driven by external such as reward and punishment.

Educational organizations need teachers to achieve their organizational objectives and they use material incentives to motivate their teachers. The success of organizations depends on motivation of their workers (Yi?eno?lu, 2018).

Therefore, at schools which are the smallest unit of educational sectors, teacher motivation is an important subject of research. Increasing teacher motivation can result in improving efficiency both on the part of teachers and students. Thus, educational sectors can achieve their objectives more easily. Enhancing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of teachers is of great importance for students to be motivated in the class and for educational reforms to take place. When the teachers are motivated, educational reforms can be realized more easily, changes are easily adapted to, and achievement and satisfaction can be increased (Gunbayi, 2005). Therefore, this research paper aims to describe the level of motivation of the public school teachers and college instructors/professor which served as a basis for faculty development program.

Nowadays, it has been pointed out that due to the limited number of studies on teacher motivation, this particular area of research is gaining more interest in order to explore further the details on the mechanism of teacher motivation (Han and Yin, 2016). Since the concept of teacher motivation is relatively new, it needs to be explored through a proper understanding of the mechanism of teacher motivation; teachers can devote their life to their chosen mission and make a positive contribution to the world with true joy and happiness.

There are many factors leading to display of low or high motivation by teachers working in school organizations in the   educational  system.  Teachers  working  at  schools may exhibit low motivation due to reasons such as physical conditions, job satisfaction, type of control exerted, and wage, and they may exhibit high motivation due to reasons such as job satisfaction, positive inter-personal relations and pleasure taken from the work (Ada et al., 2018).

As it is not possible to explain human behaviors on the basis of a single factor, there are many different types of theories of motivation and each brings in different types of conclusion which makes the understanding of the concepts rather confusing, following are discussion of theories which are related to this research.

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Herzberg’s and his associates proposed one of the most popular yet controversial theories of job satisfaction in 1959. According to Beardwell and Claydon (2007) his work did not concern motivation directly; he looked into the factors that create job satisfaction and dissatisfaction at work. The main foundation of this theory is that there are two set of factors that guide employee behavior at work; they are hygiene and motivator factors. He proposed that hygiene factors are factors like working condition, company policy, administration, pay etc. These factors, if absent creates dissatisfaction among employees but presence of them do not satisfies or motivates employees. On the other hand, motivators like recognition, development opportunities, responsibility and achievement intrinsically motivates someone to perform with high potential, (Dartey-Baah and Amoako, 2011).

Equity Theory

As mentioned by Al-Zawahreh and Al-Madi (2012) equity theory describes when an employee feels that his organization is a fair organization and in there exist a sense of equity. When employees feel that there is an inequity they get angry and frustrated. Equity leads to better performance and of higher quality of work by employees. Inequity leads to low performance and the resulting work is also of poor quality. This leads to the concept of organizational justice. Al-Zu’bi (2010) argues that organizational justice results from three different types of feeling of justice at work, they are: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice. Distributive justice occurs when the employee feels that they got the right amount of pay as they deserve. Procedural justice occurs when employees feel that there is a good explanation behind the decision of their pay and benefits. Lastly interactional justice occurs when the employees feel that their supervisors were supportive and encouraging while giving them the compensation. Organizational justice results in a sense of equity and that motivates  employees to perform at their full potential (Al-Zu’bi, 2010).

Vroom’s expectancy theory

Vroom established this theory in 1964 which was later on extended by Porter and Lawler (1968), (Lunenburg, 2011). This theory is based on three relationships, they are:

1. Effort-performance relationship: giving a certain amount of effort leads to a certain level of performance.

2. Performance-reward relationship: A certain level of performance leads to a specific organizational rewards.

3. Reward-Goal relationship: the rewards are in sync with employee’s personal goals and that the rewards must be attractive to each employee. When the above conditions are met employees are motivated at work and they exert higher level effort to give their best at work which eventually leads to organizational success and better commitment from employees (Lunenburg, 2011).

Employee motivation

According to Atkinson (2000) motivation is a driving force that stimulates positive behavior at work and the tendency to remain committed. Farhad and Freeman (2011) states that motivation is a procedure that is initiated through a series of psychological and physiological wants which ultimately triggers an exceptional performance to meet certain objectives.

Research questions

The researcher sought answers to the following research questions:

1) What is the profile of the participants in terms of the following?

i) Age;

ii) Gender;

iii) Teaching position;

iv) Length of service; and

v) Educational attainment?

2) What is the level of motivation of the participants in terms of the following as assessed by themselves?

i) Intrinsic and

ii) Extrinsic?

3) Is there a significant difference on the level of motivation of the participants when grouped according to their profile?

Research design and participants

This study utilized quantitative-descriptive survey design. Quantitative research design is aimed to discover how many people think, act or feel in a specific way (www.djsresearch.co.uk), while descriptive research aims to accurately and systematically describe

a population, situation or phenomenon (McCombes, 2019). The participants were one hundred twenty-three (123) secondary teachers of public schools in San Mariano District, Schools Division of Isabela, and twenty-five (25) instructors/professors of Isabela State University, San Mariano Campus, Sta Filomena, San Mariano, Isabela, Philippines. Hence, a total of one hundred forty-eight (148) participants with special awards, winnings in competitions and with other accomplishments or achievements received, were chosen purposively to describe a high ground level of motivation of the participants in their teaching career to come up with a faculty development program. More so, this study utilized purposive sampling procedure.  Crossman (2017) described that in this procedure the participants are selected based on the characteristics of a population and the objective of the study.

Instrumentation

The researcher made used of a survey questionnaire instrument to determine the demographic profile of the participants and to describe the level of their motivation in the teaching profession. The survey questionnaire was developed by the researcher and was validated by many experts like School Heads, Master Teachers, Deans, Guidance Counselors, and Graduate School Professors. The Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of this survey questionnaire was found to be 0.82.

Data analysis

In the analysis of data, frequency and percentage distribution were utilized to describe the demographic profile of the participants and to determine the level of their motivation, the weighted mean scores were computed. Lastly, to find out if there is a significance difference on the level of motivation of the participants when grouped according to their profile, chi-squared test of relationship was employed.

Research question one: What is the profile of the participants in terms of age, gender, teaching position, length of service and educational attainment?

Table 1 shows the demographic profile of one hundred forty eight (148) teacher-participants involved in this study. As seen on the age profile of the teacher-participants, 32. 43% of them belonged to age bracket range from 30-39 years, 27. 03% favored the age bracket range from 40-49 years, 18.92% belonged to age bracket range from 50-59 years, 18. 24% belonged to age bracket range from 20-29 years and having the lowest percentage which was 3.38% belonged to age bracket from 60 years and above.

For the gender profile of the participants, 60.81% were female and 39.19% were male. This concludes that male teachers were outnumbered by the female teachers.

In terms of the teaching positions and academic rankings, 27.03% of the participants were master teacher I, 22.92% were teacher III, 20.95% were teacher I, 6.67% were teacher II, 5.41% were master teacher II, 8.78% were instructor I, 2.70% were assistant professor I, the same percentage of 1.35 were instructor III, assistant professor II and associate professor V and having the lowest percentage of 0.68 was instructor II and associate professor I. As  to  the length  of  service,  the   participants who rendered 14-19 years in the service favored the highest percentage of 29.05% followed by 20-25 years in the service with 18.24%, 9-13 years in the service with 17.57%, 26-31 years in the service with 10.14%, 3 years and below in the service with 8.11%, 32-37 years in the service with  2.70%  and  contributing  the  least  was  the participants who rendered 38 years and above with 2.03%.

With regards to the educational attainment of the participants, majority of them were with MA units constituting 41.21% of the sample, while 27.03% were MA holders, 16.22% were baccalaureate graduate, 9.46% were having units in doctorate and 6.08% were doctorate degree holders.

Research question two: What is the level of motivation of the participants in terms intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as assessed by themselves?

Table 2 shows the mean response of the teacher-participants on intrinsic motivation. It revealed that among the intrinsic motivators of the teachers, they agreed much on the “improvement of their leadership skills” with a mean of 3.85, followed by the “acquisition of more skills in their profession” with a mean of 3.82, then “satisfaction of personal desire” with a mean of 3.76. As seen on the table, “development of desirable values” was also agreed by the teacher-participants with a mean of 3.75. They also favored on “better career development at present” with a mean of 3.66. Although, all the motivators were strongly agreed by the teacher-participants, the “career pathway” was the least among the intrinsic motivators with a mean of 3.34. As a whole there was an overall mean of 3.64 on the intrinsic motivation of the teachers which means that the motivators on the table are essential to have an outstanding performance in teaching career. It emerged that improving leadership skills is the prime intrinsic motivation of the teachers in their profession.

Table 3 presented the mean response of the teacher-participants on extrinsic motivation. Among the motivators on the table, the teacher-participants favored much on “higher pay and benefits”, with a mean of 3.99. They  also agreed on “promotion to higher rank” with a mean of 3.75 followed by “stepping stone for a more stable career/degree” with a mean of 3.63. However, the least among the extrinsic motivators on the table is “preparation for opportunities abroad” with a mean of 2.54.

Generally the overall mean of the extrinsic motivation of the teacher-participants was 3.26 which implied that all the motivators on the table were strongly agreed by the teachers. This suggests that reward, promotion and recognition are important aspects for the teachers to perform well on their assigned task. It came out that the main extrinsic motivation of the teacher-respondents was “the higher pay and benefits”.

Research question three: Is there a significant difference on the level of motivation of the participants when grouped according to their profile?

The data given in Table 4 revealed that there was a significant difference between the intrinsic motivation and the age of the teachers. As evidence, the p-value (0.044) was less than 0.05 at two tailed test, therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. In addition, it was also shown on the table that there was a significant difference between the extrinsic motivation and the age of the teachers, that is the p-value (0.041) was less than 0.05 following p<0.05.

It is also displayed on the table that there was a significant difference on the gender of the participants and their motivation in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic since the computed p-values of intrinsic (0.047) and extrinsic (0.030) were less than the set p<0.05. Hence, the null hypothesis was rejected.

The table also showed that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations have a significant difference on the teaching positions  of  the  teachers  since the p-values for intrinsic (0.006) and Extrinsic (0.021) were less than the set p-value at p<0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. The results on the table confirmed that there was a significant difference on the motivation and length of service of the teacher-participant s since the p-values for intrinsic (0.008) and extrinsic were behind at p<0.05. This purported that the null hypothesis was rejected.

Lastly the table displayed that the p-values for both the intrinsic (0.037) and extrinsic (0.007) motivation against the educational attainment were less than 0.05. This decided that the null hypothesis was rejected for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Therefore, there was a significant difference of motivation to educational status attained by the teachers.

Based on the results of the study, it reveals that majority of the teachers were from age bracket range from 30-39 years old (32.43%) and having the least percentage were the teachers with age bracket range 6o years and above (3.38%). Inceoglu et al., (2012) described that older employees were less motivated extrinsically but more by intrinsically-rewarding job features. Davila (2010) suggested on his study “the relationship between age and motivation” that “career and “making friends” motivations decrease significantly as people age. This is likely the result of older people already having established   careers  and  friendships. The  spike  in  the motivation to make friends from ages 56-65 can be explained by the loss of contact with co-workers at retirement.  

In terms of gender profile, there were many female (60.81%) teachers compared to male (39.19%) teachers. Triyanto and Handayani (2016) found out that the average value of the male teachers’ motivation is higher than that of the female teachers. This is understandable because men have a tendency to be more active than women. In women’s own culture it is still considered positive not to have motivation.

As to the teaching position of public teachers and academic rankings of college instructors/professors, majority were master teacher I (27.03%) and instructor I (8.78%), while the least was Master Teacher II (5.41%), Instructor II (0,68%) and Associate Professor I (0.68%). Ololube (2006) claims that teachers who are in higher positions or ranks are more satisfied and have a higher level of motivation to perform well and become productive. 

In terms of length of service, majority of the teachers rendered service for 14-19 years (29.05%), whereas having the least percentage rendered 38 years and above (2.03%). Gursangat and Jansen (2010) revealed that the length of service is a predictor of the levels of motivation of the teachers.

As to the educational attainment, majority of the teachers were with master’s units (41.21%) while there only few who finished doctorate degree (6.08%). Recepo?lu (2014) presents that teachers having higher education will naturally increase their expectations; hence, they need more motivational factors.

The data revealed in this study that the level of motivation was significantly different among the teachers’ age, gender, teaching positions, length of service, educational attainment.

Moreover, the result showed further that the level of motivation of the teacher-participants were high with an overall mean of 3.63 for intrinsic motivation and 3.26 for extrinsic motivation. The motivators were strongly agreed by the teachers. Sugino (2010) believed that motivation on whether intrinsic or extrinsic were important factors in the improvement and betterment of any profession. Some of the motivators that emerged in the result of this study were the “improvement of the leadership skill”, “development of desirable values”, “higher pay and benefits” and “promotion to higher ranks”.

This result is supported by the study of Demir (2011). A teacher who is intrinsically motivated may be observed to have a high performance and undertake a task for its own sake, for the satisfaction it provides or for the feeling of accomplishment and self-actualization. Intrinsic motivation remains an important construct, reflecting the natural human propensity to learn and assimilate.

However, extrinsic motivation is argued to vary considerably in its relative autonomy and thus can either reflect external control or true self-regulation. In  addition, when a person is extrinsically motivated, the person is driven to perform his or her task because it leads to some separate consequence (Ryan and Deci, 2002).

For a person to be extrinsically motivated then an instrumentality between an activity and some separate reward is required. This means that motivation is derived not from the activity itself, but rather from the extrinsic consequences to which the activity leads (Gagne and Deci, 2005). In essence “the clearest examples of extrinsically motivated behaviours are those performed to obtain a tangible reward or to avoid a punishment” (Deci et al., 2011). The tangible rewards here can either be of a financial, material or a social character, all having in common that they originate from the environment.

Finally, the results uncover that there was a significant difference on the age profile and the level of motivation in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations since the p-values of intrinsic (0.044) and Extrinsic (0.040) were less than 0.05. This result is supported by the study of Guven (2012), Han and Yin (2016) and Recepo?lu (2014). It can be claimed that younger teachers are more affected by motivational factors. In this respect, it is seen that the older the teacher is, the less he/she is affected by motivational factors, the less sensitive they become towards their job and the more reluctant they become. Efforts should be made to find ways of making older teachers more motivated.

For the gender profile and motivation of the teacher-participants, the result confirmed that there was a significant difference between the variables since the p-values of intrinsic (0.047) and extrinsic (0.030) were less than 0.05. Vašková (2005) stated that from a gender perspective, men place a higher value than women do on the so-called ‘instrumental values’ (basic salary and bonuses) as motivational factors in their work performance and identification with the employer. Women, on the other hand, place more importance than men do on inter-personal relationships at the workplace, respectful treatment by the employer, and the possibility of reconciling work and family life. Thus, it is clear that women place more value on so-called ‘soft issues’.

As to the motivation and teaching positions of the teacher-participants, the p-values for intrinsic (0.006) and extrinsic (0.021) were less than the 0.05; hence the variables were significantly different. Ololube (2006) on his study “Teachers job satisfaction and motivation”. Teachers who are in higher positions or ranks are more satisfied and have a higher level of motivation to perform well and become productive.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of the teacher-participants when correlated to length of service. The p-values of 0.008 and 0.048 for the correlation satisfied the condition p<0.05.  Gursangat and Jansen (2010) described that the length of service in the school is a predictor of motivation of the teachers.

Lastly,  the  results revealed that there was a significant difference on motivation when correlated to educational attainment of the teacher-participants. This is evidently true because the p-values of intrinsic (0.037) and extrinsix (0.007) satisfied the condition p<0.05. This finding is supported by Recepo?lu (2014), Y?lmaz (2009) and Tanr?verdi (2007). Teachers having higher education will naturally increase their expectations; hence, they need more motivational factors.

The results of this study suggest that the motivating factors of the teacher-participants from public secondary schools and university vary depending on their age, gender, teaching position, length of service and educational attainment. The results of this study ultimately provide the avenues to develop faculty programs that strengthen teachers’ self-managed educational teams.

Based on the results and discussion of the study, it can be concluded that the demographic profile such as age, gender, length of service, teaching positions and educational attainment of the teacher-participants are factors that influence the level of their motivation in the teaching profession. It was found out that the level of motivation in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic was strongly agreed by the teacher-participants as assessed by themselves. It emerged that there was a significant relationship on the participants’ levels of motivation when grouped according to their profile.  Moreover, it can be deduced that the motivation of the teachers should be selected among intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. In order to strengthen the motivation of the teachers, encouragement for reclassification and promotion must be given to them. In order to increase the motivation of both younger and older teachers, motivators should be organized more carefully and in order to elevate the motivation of the teachers, they can be encouraged to enroll master’s degree and doctorate degree by their principals.

Generally, it can be concluded that if the teachers are highly motivated then teachers will contribute a high level of performance in the school to attain its goals and objectives and become productive, boost students’ academic achievement and create a good relationship among co-workers. In addition, motivation whether intrinsic or extrinsic can boost the moral and performance of the teachers in the educative process.

The following recommendations were forwarded:

1) In order for the teachers to be motivated intrinsically, seminars and trainings on leadership and career pathways should be provided.

2) In order for the teachers to  be  extrinsically  motivated, promotion in higher ranks and more benefits should be given by the department.

3) Teachers should engage in continuing professional development such as enrolling to graduate schools and speakership engagement.

The author has not declared any conflicts of interests.