International Journal of Languages' Education and Teaching

Öz

The purpose of the present study is to find out initial career motives and demotivation of English
language teachers working in Turkish context. 30 teachers working at high state schools participated
in the current study. Initial career motives and demotivation questionnaires adopted from Kim & Kim
(2015) were applied to the participants. Initial career motives questionnaire has four factors: global
orientation, job security, altruism, and ought-to-self, each one represented by 3 or 4 items.
Demotivation questionnaire have three factors as: obstacles to communicate language teaching,
inadequate administrative support, and lack of social recognition. In addition to the questionnaires, a
semi-structured interview was conducted with 3 of the participants. The descriptive statistics of each
factor was presented by the tables and supported by qualitative data. The result of the study showed
that with regard to the initial motives of teachers, global orientation found to be the most important
reason of being an English teacher followed by job security, altruism and ought-to-self, respectively.
With regard to the demotivating factors, inadequate administrative support was found to be the most
influential factor decreasing teachers’ motivation. The findings of the study were compared with the
findings of the previous similar studies.