Implementing High-Quality Educational Reform Efforts: An Interpersonal Circumplex Model Bridging Social and Personal Aspects of Teachers’ Motivation

Abstract

Professional-development is often a catalyst for transforming research-based theories and findings into best-teaching-practices and increased student-achievement within whole-school reform efforts. In the following chapter, we present a theoretical model that integrates social aspects of personal motivation (i.e., Self-Determination Theory), personal aspects of motivation (i.e., Control-Value Theory), and circumplex models of interpersonal relationships to understand factors that affect teachers’ implementation of promising ideas presented in professional development. From a Self-Determination Theory perspective, individuals’ intrinsic motivation is facilitated through environmental supports of three elements: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. From a Control-Value Theory perspective individuals’ motivations and emotional correspondents are due to personal judgments regarding issues of personal control (e.g., agency/self-efficacy) and personal values (e.g., goals). We integrate these theories, and present a circumplex model to describe two primary dimensions of principals’ interactional behaviors that provide overt and covert messages about their support (or lack of support) for teachers’ autonomy and competence. We propose that principals’ supportive or unsupportive behaviors merge with teachers’ personal values and perceptions of control to shape teachers’ motivations for implementing high-quality professional development for whole-school reform.