Teachers' motivation to teach national education in Singapore: a self-determination theory approach
Abstract
The National Education (NE) programme was set up in Singapore schools in 1997 to inculcate a national identity and values in the younger generation. Teachers in schools are given the important role of developing a shared sense of nationhood among their students. However, no study has yet examined the motivations for teaching NE in schools. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teachers' motivations, perceptions of NE, perceived competence to teach NE and feelings on the NE programme provided in their teacher training course, using the cluster analysis method. The study involved 4242 pre-service teachers (1229 males, 2986 females, 27 missing information) from the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. The results showed that 15.6% of the teachers belonged to a “high amotivation” cluster, 38.0% formed a “high externally regulated” cluster, 19.9% made up a cluster labelled as “low externally regulated”, and the rest (26.5%) had an “intrinsically regulated” profile. The four clusters showed significant gender and programme differences. In summary, the results from the cluster analysis supported the concurrent validity of the clusters in terms of pre-service teachers' perceptions of their involvement in NE activities, its importance, NE as government propaganda, competence to teach NE and satisfaction with the NE programme provided in their teacher training course.