Teachers’ Goal Orientation Profiles and Participation in Professional Development Activities

Participation in professional development activities is important for teachers to continuously improve their knowledge and skills. However, teachers differ in their attitude towards learning activities. This paper examined how different goal orientation profiles are related to participation in professional development activities (acquiring information and asking feedback). To this end, we conducted latent profile analysis based on a sample of 984 teachers in vocational education. Five profiles were identified: diffuse (50.1%), moderate learning (12.3%), high avoidance (10.9%), performance oriented (15.9%) and success oriented (10.7%). Furthermore, means of acquiring information and asking feedback from teachers were compared across the profiles. Teachers with a success-oriented profile (high learning and performance approach goals) scored significantly higher while teachers with a high-avoidance profile scored significantly lower on asking for feedback and acquiring information. Exploration of background characteristics indicated that age, gender and work experience outside education were related to the goal orientation profiles. Our findings show that goal orientation profiles can be used to explain individual differences in teachers’ propensity to engage in professional development activities.