Teaching Motivations as Predictors of Efficacy of ELT Student Teachers

Research shows that individuals‘ motivations for choosing a teaching job influence their professional achievements and quality of their work. Moreover, efficacy has been found to influence many aspects of teachers‘ job such as student achievement, instructional quality, commitment to the profession, and job satisfaction both in mainstream education and in the English Language Teaching context. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the power of teaching motivations of eighty ELT student teachers to predict their efficacy. To this aim, the FIT-Choice scale which evaluates twelve teaching motivation factors, and an efficacy scale were administered to the participants. The data were analyzed using multiple regression test. The results show that among the twelve personal and social utility motivations and perceived ability for teaching, the perceived ability is the only significant predictor of student teachers' efficacy and it explains 24 percent of the variation in student efficacy. The results imply the significance of paying special attention to teaching capabilities of teaching candidates in the interview process of student recruitment at Farhangian University, as well as trying to improve the sense of accomplishment of student teachers through the education program at the university by providing chances of mastery experiences for the student teachers.