Motivação autodeterminada dos professores das áreas de ciências exatas, da terra e biológicas

Abstract

Self-determined motivation can be based on types or the quality of an individual's motivation, as well as their quantity. This basic psychological process can provide important results for psychological health and well-being, performance, effective, creative problem solving and deep or conceptual learning. Therefore, the general objective of this work was to evaluate the self-determined motivation of teachers in the areas of Exact, Earth and Biological Sciences. The Teacher Motivation Scale (EMD), already validated in Brazil, was used as a data collection instrument, being composed of five dimensions (performance, development, teaching practice, continuing education and institutional insertion). Sociodemographic questionnaires, about the experiences and characteristics linked to the teaching career, in addition to the situations experienced during social isolation due to the pandemic of COVID-19, were included to the set of requested information. Through an online survey, the sample consisted of 104 public or private teachers who work or have worked in Elementary School II, High School and Higher. The results obtained in the chi-square tests indicated significant associations between the variables "socioeconomic class", "education level", "teaching time" and "public sphere". In Pearson's correlations, eleven correlations (direct and indirect) were found between the dimensions of the EMD and the sociodemographic data and the experiences in teaching. In the frequencies and measures of central tendency of the dimensions of the EMD, it was verified that the development dimension has a greater approximation with the self-determined motivation, in contrast to the institutional insertion dimension, which was constituted with less approximation. It was concluded that the self-determined motivation is correlated with the sociodemographic profile and the experiences in teachers' teaching, in addition to the indication that the participants were, above all, in the extrinsic motivation stage. It is hoped that these results can be applied to future research.