Abstract
Junior academics at German universities work and qualify in a highly competitive environment. Most of them have to cope with too little time for too many demands in research and teaching. As previous studies have shown, these work conditions may impair well-being due to goal conflicts and may threaten their teaching motivation. How could this be prevented? Drawing on self-determination theory, the present study takes a motivational psychological perspective and addresses the role of the satisfaction of basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness for the experience of goal conflicts and self-determined teaching motivation. Results from Latent Profile Analysis and multivariate analyses show that satisfaction of all three needs is necessary for junior academics to feel less strained by goal conflicts. Autonomy plays a crucial role for the frequency of goal conflicts, whereas competence has a particular impact on teaching motivation. The role of relatedness remains difficult to determine. Results are discussed in terms of work conditions, individual competencies, and derivable practical implications.
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Notes
The four-class solution was selected on the basis of AIC, BIC, aBIC, and Vuong–Lo–Mendell–Rubin test, as well as the Lo–Mendell–Rubin adjusted LRT. Those tests suggest a good fit, and that four classes are sufficient but that five classes are not needed. However, we have to admit that the entropy was 0.663 and the bootstrapped parametric likelihood ratio test has a p value of 0.0060, which suggests that five classes are better than four classes. Finally, as the four-class model fits our theoretical expectations best, we have chosen to go with the four-class model (Bold values in Table 4).
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This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), support code: 01PH08032. We thank all university executives for their support and junior academics for their participation.
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Esdar, W., Gorges, J. & Wild, E. The role of basic need satisfaction for junior academics’ goal conflicts and teaching motivation. High Educ 72, 175–190 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9944-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9944-0