The Motivation of EFL Teachers at Armenian Universities: Teacher Selves in Context

Although teacher motivation has been researched through the lens of numerous theories (e.g. self-determination, expectancy-value), its various conceptualisations do not seem sufficient to provide an in-depth understanding of how individuals’ motivation to teach evolves during their career and how it is socially constructed in day to day contexts of work. To address this issue, I employ the possible selves theory (Markus & Nurius, 1986) and the ‘person-in-context’ approach (Ushioda, 2009) to draw together the psychological (self) and the social components of motivation (context) in a study of six Armenian university teachers of English.
Data were collected in three phases over a period of six months using semi-structured interviews, journal writing and unstructured classroom observations followed by post-observation interviews. Despite their different ages, diverse teaching experiences and varied socio-cultural backgrounds, the data suggest certain commonalities in the participants’ ongoing motivation to teach. They do not possess distinct ideal, ought-to and feared selves but, instead, they appear to have developed a ‘feasible self’ which is a unity comprising the components of all those selves interwoven and complementary to each other which can be realistic and attainable in their context. The feasible self emerges from representations within the teachers’ social environment and experiences and is influenced by and co-constructed with significant others. The findings of the study suggest that there is a need to develop specific strategies which will help teachers build and attain their context-specific feasible selves.