Investigation of Demographic Properties and Motivation Factors of Physics Teachers.

Abstract Scientific and technological developments resulted in an increase in the requirement of education in the society. In addition to this, the expectations from teachers differed and the need for more qualified teachers also increased. One of the factors affecting the quality of teachers is their motivation. In this research, it was aimed to reveal both demographic and professional profiles of secondary school physics teachers together with factors motivating themselves. General survey model was used in the research. Motivation factors priority order questionnaire was used as a data collecting tool. There were also questions in the questionnaire which determined the demographic and professional profiles of teachers. Motivation factors priority order questionnaire constituted of 6 different motivation factors. The research was performed on 103 physics teachers who were working at public and private high schools in Konya city center and in some districts. The statistical analysis of the research was carried out with SPSS 15 software by using percentage, frequency, Kruskal-Wallis H test, and Mann Whitney U test. 80.6 % of physics teachers in the sample were male and the rest was female. The results of the analysis indicated that the most motivating factor for physics teachers was factors related with advantages and the least motivating factor was related with the profession. The interesting and challenging thing here is that the factors "related with profession" were at the sixth and so the final stage. Since factors such as making different lectures, following new source materials, information exchange with colleagues, presence of education technology and growing good students were at the final stage for motivation of teachers, this presents serious challenges in terms of future of teaching profession and growing of rising generation. Key Words Physics teacher, Motivation, Demographic Properties. One of the principal factors of education activities is the teacher. A teacher is a person growing the individuals who will be the future of the society and take the country much further. It's a known fact that the influence of a teacher on student and education programs is higher than other factors (Erdem, 1998). The teachers should have field information, use education methods effectively, have information and comprehension about development psychology and learning-teaching strategies, consider personal differences of students, communicate well with colleagues at school in order to grow manpower necessary for societies and improve the quality of life (Garmston, 1998). The most important extent of the problems related with education system applications which always constitute the agenda of Turkey is training of teachers and the quality of trained teachers (Guzel, 2005). The quality of teachers is very important in succeeding and learning of students (Friedman, 2000; Korkut & Dogan, 2001). It's necessary for teachers having the responsiblity of training human power in the quantity and quality need of countries to get long-term education and to be matured in their professions in order to work in education institutions more efficiently and to maintain teaching and education periods appropriate for technological developments necessitated by the era (Ustuner, Ersoy, & Sancar, 2000). For this aim, it's necessary for teachers to adapt and train themselves continuously, shortly, to get a professional teacher identity (Azar & Cepni, 1999; Erdem, Ustuner, & Sancar, 2000 ) Today success of institutions at every stage is dependent on providing the motivation of employees working at that institution (Yigenoglu, 2007). For this reason, teacher motivation at educational institutions is an important research subject. Motivation means interior and exterior-sourced impulse, desire and wishes that lead, support and control human behavior by affecting. Motivation is a factor which freshens up, relieves, leads and controls our behaviors for a target. …