Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Background of the study

The hope to revive China lies on education, and the hope to develop education lieson teachers. These are the experience in the development of education and the objectiverequirements in era development. The quality of teachers is directly associated with thesuccess or failure of a nation's education. Moreover, it has an effect on the quality of thenational people and the cultivation of various kinds of talents, thus concerning the futureand fate of a nation.Then what is the social status of teachers (here I mean teachers of basic education),and are they popular in the society? Firstly，let's look at the situation in some foreigncountries. In the United States, an investigation made by “the Carnegie Foundation forthe Advancement of Teaching NCAA “ showed that the most popular professions were:doctors, business owners, lawyers，music and film artists, writers or news reporters, but itnever mentioned teachers in the list. In Denmark，teacher is a supreme profession,because teachers' income ranks high among a variety of occupations. The case is true inSouth Korea as well. And in Finland，teacher is the most respectable and popularprofession among college graduates, but it's also the profession with the highestrequirement.

…………

1.2 Significance of the study

Seen from the professional perspective, without strong developing power, it is hardfor teachers to develop professional ability. And, the power of professional abilitydevelopment is related with the starting career path motivation to some degree. Thestronger the aspiration and the motivation to select the job，the higher enthusiasm andinterest they would be in career activity，which is beneficial to improve the professionalability. Some researches indicate that teacher's career path motivation is closely linkedwith many educational phenomena, such as career value internalization, stability ofteacher's professional mind, stability of teacher's group, career bumout and action ofknowledge sharing etc.In theory, we expect this research to make up for the deficiency of present theoryabout career path motivation to some degree，and enrich the theory about the careerpsychology and professional development of TEFL. Moreover, it could serve as areference for the study of prospective teachers' career path motivation in China.In practice，we make an attempt to reveal the status quo of TEFL's career pathmotivation. Based on the deep analysis of affecting factors of TEFL's career pathmotivation, we try to put forward some suggestions on directing the graduates to makebetter career selections. At the same time, we are intended to provide some useful advicesabout career guidance for TEFL and English majors，and about the formulation of teacherpolicies for national policy makers.

…………

Chapter Two: Literature Review

2.1 The definition of the concept

In 1936, the term of motivation firstly appeared in psychological works with theoriginal meaning pushing and inducing action. (Wei, 2003). Motivation is defined as"some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achievesomething" (Harmer, 2001). As stated by Brown (1994), motivation is a term that is usedto define the success or the failure of any complex task. Steers and Porter (1991) dealwith three matters while discussing motivation: what energizes human behavior; whatdirects or channels such behavior and how this behavior is maintained or sustained?Motivation is thought to be responsible for "why people decide to do something，howlong they are willing to sustain the activity and how hard they are going to pursue it"(Domyei, 2001). While in this study，the internal drive that initiates and sustains peopleto do something toward a desired goal; when people's need, interest, hobby and valueturn into motivation, they can have driving effect to the activity. (King，1999) Motivation can be divided into many types according to different standard，whilecareer path motivation is just one type. London (1999) believes that career pathmotivation is a series of individual characteristics，career decision-making and behavior，which can reflect the individual's professional identity, career flexibility，career insight.That is to say, career path motivation is the power that arises and maintains individuals toplan, behave and decide for one's career, which consists of three parts, professionalflexibility, insight and recognition. It includes professional motivation, managementmotivation, career motivation and all motivations related to career decision and action.Based on psychological theories of career choice, this study define career motivation asthe concept raised by the various needs of individuals，is an individual decision inselecting a career and maintain this decision until the target is reached. It shares somesame characteristics of other motivations. The teacher's career path motivation is theforce and reason that make teachers to select teaching as their career and maintain thisdecision until the fulfillment of the target.

……….

2.2 Theoretical framework

Job selection motivation theory; Motivation could be classified into different typeswith different standards, one of which named career path motivation was what we wouldtalk about in the following section. It was assumed by London School that career pathmotivation referred to the serial individual characteristics, career decision-making andactions to reflect the individual career identity, career resilience and career insight. Thatis to say career path motivation was the power to cause and maintain the career planning,career action and career decision-making of individuals. Meanwhile, it was composed bycareer resilience，career insight and career identity，covering a scope of individual jobmotivation, managerial motivation and all motivation related with careerdecision-making and actions. However, teacher's career path motivation refers to theimpetus and reason for teaching decision making and maintaining until the goal wasreached. As mentioned above, the researches about motivation theory could provide afundamental theoretical support for career path motivation research, while multi-anglestudy about career selection at home and abroad could provide direct research basis forthis research.

…………

Chapter Three Research Methodology...... 16

3.1 Research context...... 16

3.2 Research participants......   17

3.3 Research methods ......17

3.4 Questionnaire and interview development ......   18

3.5 Data collection ......19

3.6 Data analysis ......20

Chapter Four Findings......    21

4.1 Description of the participants ......21

4.2 General motivation type ......22

4.3 The relationship between career path motivation and professional stability......23

4.4 The overall information of the career path motivation...... 24

Chapter Five Discussion................ 26

5.1 Discussion about basic information of the participants...... 26

5.2 Discussion about General motivation type ......26

5.3 Discussion about the relationship between motivation and professionalstability...... 28

5.4 Factors influencing participants' decision-making...... 28

Chapter Five Discussion

5.1 Discussion about basic information of the participants

The most remarkable figure in the table 1 is that the number of normal participantsand non-normal ones is almost balanced, with the former taking up 54.29% and the lattertaking up 45.71%. It's a strong evidence to prove that many non-normal English majorstudents want to be teachers and thus rush into the reserve army of teachers. That is to say，more and more non-normal majors consider becoming teachers in the future, althoughthey did not decide on it when pursuing their bachelor's degree. Therefore it is partlysuggested that the teaching profession is becoming favored by more young people, andthe status of teachers has increased a lot in the past few years.Because of the expanding enrollment policy, nearly 80% universities set Englishmajor, which makes English majors beyond the demand. It becomes more and more hardfor English majors to find jobs. Figures from Chinese College Students EmploymentReport 2012 (Mycos Institute, 2012) showed that, English major was listed "Red-CardWarning Major". The employment of English major students is rather embarrassing.Many English major graduates rush into education area to get a job. There is a set offigures here, from the survey done in Honghe University about the career orientation ofEnglish major graduates. In 2009, 37.78% English major graduates went into educationarea, while in 2010，28.72%，in 2011, 44.12%, in 2012, 23.47% (Hu Guifang，2013). Ittells that education area has already been the hot target employment area for Englishmajor students，which absorb a great number of English major students.

……….

Conclusion

In this dissertation we mainly focus on the following four aspects: the types ofTEFL postgraduates' career path motivation, the relationship between the motivation andtheir professional stability, factors influencing their career seeking, and ways ofoptimizing their motivation, particularly intrinsic motivation.It is concluded that the living type takes up the largest proportion of all the seventypes of career path motivation，followed by passion and character type, and thendevotion type, persuaded type, have-to type and others. The percentage of devotion typeis rather low，which to some extent suggests that the participants are generally lacking inthe sense of devotion, and they are concerned more about their personal interests andindividual value realization.In terms of the relationship between career path motivation and the stability ofprofessional mind, it is found out that the participants belonging to the devotion andpassion type are the most stable in their professional mentality, while those choosingcharacter type have less stability and those choosing living type have even less stability.But on the whole, their professional stability is fairly high，since over a half of themwould like to stick to this profession in the future.As to the factors influencing the participants' decision-making in job hunting, thefollowing ones---career interest, self assessment, education impact and career reward,play a vital role, while other factors may only serve as a reference.

…………

Reference (omitted)