The Formation of Teachers’ Intrinsic Motivation in Professional Development

Teachers’ development is a coordinated and systematic process of external behavior and internal states. Motivation is a reflection of teachers’ states and levels of development. Intrinsic motivation is an ideal motivation to support teachers’ high-level development. This study selected and interviewed teachers who would enter the intrinsic motivation phase Change and development mechanism of motivation was analyzed. From case analysis, it is found that teachers’ extrinsic motivation can be transformed into intrinsic motivation. Teachers’ existing development value, development level of teaching practice, teachers’ feeling in their development processes and the interaction between the three aspects would influence the generation of intrinsic motivation. At the initial stage of development, teachers’ existing values and external tasks can promote teachers to optimize their own practice and influence the level of practice development. Teachers’ value is self-constructed, but also can be guided and promoted by others. Yet it can affect teaching practice only when it is based on teachers’ original values Over-strong external goals will restrain teachers from constructing deep teaching practice. Professional guidance deep into teachers’ ecological environment helps to construct ideal teaching processes. Teaching practice on a deep level will drive teachers to alter or reconstruct their values of development and make the teaching work much more meaningful, which can facilitate teachers’ positive feelings about the teaching process. This process will also be influenced by teachers’ other value expectation and schools’ cultural environment. Teachers’ narrow goals and school’s biased emphasis on the teaching results will make teachers experience low levels of efficiency and reduce the possibility of intrinsic motivation. Teachers will have a stable value judgement after they have really experienced improvement in teaching and external acknowledgement of their development value. Stable intrinsic motivation will come into being when teachers’ focus and interests are all transferred to the teaching process after integrating individual development and career development into intrinsic values.