Helen M G Watt

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• PhD 2002, University of Sydney
• Professor at The University of Sydney

This mixed-methods study analysed motivations to teach among Finnish first-year teacher students (N = 946) from early childhood, primary and special education programs, to discern potential additional motivations in a context where teaching is highly regarded and any differences between programs. Responses to an open-ended question revealed complem...

Our study examined how students’ perceived teacher beliefs and classroom goal structures, gender (of teachers and students) and own perceived talent, controlling for prior achievements, together explained motivational outcomes of students’ achievement goals, intrinsic value and enrollment choices in mathematics and English. Participants were 1086 g...

This study examined the extent to which boys fell into clusters comprised of different levels of motivations and costs. In turn, the antecedents of these clusters and associations with engagement and wellbeing outcomes were considered. Based on survey responses from 168 students across Years 5, 7 and 9 from an all-boys' school in Sydney, Australia,...

An explanation for the underrepresentation of women in mathematical fields is the communal goal congruity perspective; that women tend to value communal over agentic goals, perceived to not be afforded by mathematical careers. Less is known about how agentic and communal goals may interact to influence mathematical career trajectories. Analysing a...

International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology https://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset/article/view/1402

Teachers’ self-efficacy and value represent two central components of their motivation. However, there is a scarcity of knowledge regarding the relevance of value for teaching quality and student outcomes, as well as the extent to which interrelations depend on contextual resources and demands. Engaging students in their learning is an essential as...

Teacher registration is increasingly utilised as a governance mechanism to audit teachers' work and drive professional practice. There is limited and mixed empirical evidence, however, as to whether registration drives teaching quality. Our study extends this limited empirical base by critically examining the policy trajectory in Australia to bring...

Flertallet av studentene ved landets høyere utdanningsinstitusjoner er kvinner, og det er like mange kvinner som menn som tar doktorgrad. Likevel er over to tredeler av professorene ved landets universiteter og høgskoler menn. Hvordan kan vi forstå denne vedvarende kjønnsubalansen? Hva er det med akademia som gjør at kvinner faller fra på veien opp...

Flertallet av studentene ved landets høyere utdanningsinstitusjoner er kvinner, og det er like mange kvinner som menn som tar doktorgrad. Likevel er over to tredeler av professorene ved landets universiteter og høgskoler menn. Hvordan kan vi forstå denne vedvarende kjønnsubalansen? Hva er det med akademia som gjør at kvinner faller fra på veien opp...

Educational reformers all around the globe are continuously searching for ways to make schools more effective and efficient. In Germany, this movement has led to reforms that reduced overall school time of high track secondary schools from 9 to 8 years, which was compensated for by increasing average instruction time per week in lower secondary sch...

‘Out-of-field’ refers to teachers teaching subjects for which they do not hold a subject-specific qualification. Theory and empirical evidence suggest it can adversely affect teachers’ work and students’ learning. Teacher shortages and aspects of school organisational practice have been explanations linked to out-of-field teaching. We draw on Austr...

Gendered participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (‘STEM’) fields remains a pressing concern. Although women have made progress in entering life sciences (LS) they remain severely underrepresented in physical sciences, mathematics, engineering and technology (PMET). Drawing on expectancy-value theory, motivational predictor...

Drawing on an existing typology, this study used latent transition profile analysis (LTPA) to examine changes in the striving and wellbeing profiles among teachers from their early until mid-career. Five profiles were identified (Sparing, Good health, Ambitious, Burnout and Wornout) among a longitudinal sample of 414 Australian secondary and primar...

Studies drawing on Butler’s (2012) Goal Orientations for Teaching framework show mastery and relational goals are beneficial, ability-avoidance maladaptive and inconsistent effects for ability-approach. We adopt a person-centered approach to discern the extent to which teachers pursue different goal combinations. In two studies of mid-career primar...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-021-00441-z

Although apprenticeships ease the school-to-work transition for youth, many apprentices seriously consider dropping out. While associated with noncompletions, dropout considerations are important to study in their own right, because they reflect a negative quality of apprenticeship experience and can impact apprentices’ quality of learning and enga...

A well-qualified, well-paid, stable workforce with high psychological and emotional wellbeing is critical to the provision of quality early childhood education and care, yet workforce shortages and high turnover persist in Australia and internationally. This paper uses ecological theory to conceptualise and make sense of findings from research that...

Correlates of turnover intent among primary (N = 580) and secondary (N = 675), male (N = 254) and female (N = 999) teachers, were examined through the lens of the job demands-resources (JD-R) model. Multigroup structural equation modelling indicated that job demands (workload, student misbehaviour), and the personal demand of work–family conflict,...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the career motivations of future counseling professionals. Design/methodology/approach Students completing their Masters of Counseling ( n =174) responded to a 30 min survey about their career motivations, counseling career choice satisfaction, planned persistence in the counseling profession and per...

Pertinent to concern in Australia and elsewhere regarding shortages in STEM fields, motivational expectancies and values predict STEM study and career aspirations. Less is known about how “cost” values may deter, and how expectancies/values and costs combine for different profiles of learners to predict achievement aspirations and psychological wel...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a professional self-efficacy scale for counsellors and psychologists encompassing identified competencies within professional standards from national and related international frameworks for psychologists and counsellors. Design/methodology/approach An initial opportune sample of postgraduate psychol...

Although Bandura had proposed that self-efficacy once established is relatively stable, it remains a topic of debate, as empirical evidence has shown different patterns of changes in self-efficacy across different career stages. The current study presents longitudinal data from 74 beginning school teachers in Victoria, Australia to discern changes...

A developmental perspective on teacher identity and motivation leads us to expect processes of adaption and dynamism that are responsive to context. Critical to our understanding is the consideration that identity is a multidimensional construct in which the personal and social are interwoven. We explore how extant motivational theories offer insig...

The motivational profiles, perceptions about teaching, and background demographic characteristics of beginning English and Mathematics teachers were compared within an Australian sample, from the start of their teacher education studies (N T1 = 325; 213 English) until early career teaching (N T2 = 132; 89 English). Beginning Mathematics teachers te...

Many studies of teacher motivation have been conducted in different contexts over time. However, until fairly recently there has not been a reliable measure available to allow comparisons across samples and settings. This has resulted in an abundance of findings which cannot be directly compared or synthesised. The FIT-Choice instrument offers the...

This edited volume is focused on cultural and individual factors which underpin motivations to choose a teaching career and the consequences of those teaching motivations for teachers and their students. A major impetus was to bring together accomplished researchers from around the world, each drawing on large-scale survey data to address these cen...

Although women have made progress in entering scientific careers in biology, they remain underrepresented in mathematically intensive fields such as physics. We investigated whether gender differences in mathematics motivation and socialisers’ perceptions impacted choices for diverse STEM careers of varying mathematical intensity. Drawing on expect...

The special issue, “Theoretical Foundations of Engagement in Mathematics: Empirical studies from the field”, provides a vehicle to promote the elaboration of significant theories and frameworks relevant to mathematics education research—specifically learners’ engagement in mathematics. The topic of student engagement has been a burgeoning area of i...

This study examines whether and how student-perceived parents' and teachers' overestimation of students' own perceived mathematical ability can explain trajectories for adolescents' mathematical task values (intrinsic and utility) controlling for measured achievement, following expectancy-value and self-determination theories. Longitudinal data com...

According to Eccles and Jacobs' (1986) parent socialization model, parents’ gendered ability and value beliefs influence girls’ and boys’ interpretations of those beliefs, and hence students’ domain-specific valuing of tasks and competence beliefs and subsequent career plans. Studies have rarely analyzed how both student-perceived mothers’ and fath...

Many studies of teacher motivation have been conducted in different contexts over time. However, until fairly recently there has not been a reliable measure available to allow comparisons across samples and settings. This has resulted in an abundance of findings which cannot be directly compared or synthesised. The FIT-Choice instrument offers the...

The Best Practice in Mathematics Education project was funded by the Australian Office of the Chief Scientist, to examine promotion of students’ learning, engagement and aspirations in this core learning domain. We draw upon cross-sectional survey data from 551 students in grades three to nine to examine how students’ mathematics engagement relates...

Interest has long been regarded as an important motivational construct in the learning of mathematics. It has been contended that the development of interest is directed by two control systems: an emotional and a cognitive. Under the former, students are attracted to activities that are enjoyable, whereas under the latter they consciously engage in...

Teachers constitute a large, heterogeneous workforce which has been the subject of policy measures designed to raise the quality of the pool of those seeking to enter, and remain, in the profession. The essence of these recruitment and retention interventions has been the desire to attract academically able and committed people who will be inspirat...

The motivations for undertaking teacher education and perceptions about the teaching profession were examined among 802 fourth-year undergraduate teacher education students at two public and two private universities in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia (M = 21, SD = 2.31, 83.16% women). Following translations and piloting, participants completed th...

Motivational theories were developed in relation to students; over the last decade, researchers have turned their attention also to teachers. We overview each of three major motivation theories (expectancy-value, achievement goal, and self-determination) that have thus far been reinterpreted in relation to teachers, involving the adaptation of cons...

There is an urgent need to integrate complementary perspectives that address the question of how pathways into STEM can be facilitated at various points along the course of students' and young adults' educational and occupational development. Additionally, it is important to move beyond results that highlight only single aspects.

Future teachers have been found to exhibit different profiles of professional engagement and career development aspirations (PECDA) even at the very outset of their teaching career (Watt & Richardson, 2008). Highly engaged persisters, highly engaged switchers, and lower engaged desisters differed in their initial motivations for having chosen teach...

Keynote Resumé presented at NAFOL, Tromsø, 21 May, 2014

The classroom environment influences students’ academic outcomes, but it is often students’ perceptions that shape their classroom experiences. Our study examined the extent to which observed classroom environment features shaped perceptions of the classroom, and explained levels of, and changes in, girls’ motivation in junior secondary school scie...

INTRODUCTION This special issue is an initiative of the "Network Gender & STEM: Educational and occupational pathways and participation" (www.genderandSTEM.com). Members of the network, founded in 2010, share the objectives to:

We examine beginning women and men STEM (Science, Technology, and Mathematics) secondary teachers' initial motivations for choosing to teach, and subsequent reported teaching style during early career, among a sample recruited from four Australian teacher education programs during first year. Beginning STEM teachers (N = 245, 53% women at Time 1; N...

Teaching is increasingly recognised as a complex, demanding career. Teachers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than other professionals. The career is subject to heightened levels of public scrutiny and yet offers only modest rewards in the form of social status and income. Drawing on a typological model of coping styles among a divers...

Increasingly, over the past 50 years, women have been studying and working in professions once dominated by men. In 80% of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations women now equal or exceed the numbers of men completing tertiary level education (OECD, 2010).

The study explores the possibilities of gender, ethnicity, and religion differences on attributions (locus of control, stability, personal and external control), motivational goals (learning, performance approach, performance avoidance, and work avoidance), self-efficacy, intelligence beliefs, religiosity, racial/ethnic identity, and academic perfo...

Teaching is considered one of the most trusted professions, yet literature evaluating teachers’ understanding of professional behaviour is scarce. Recently, technological advancements such as Social Networking Sites (SNS; e.g. Facebook) have created fresh debate about appropriate behaviour for teachers: in school and online. The “Professional Inter...

Relationships between cultural factors (ethnicity and religiosity) and dimensions of students’ attributions for their success and failure (locus of control, stability, personal control and external control), along with motivational goals (learning, performance approach, performance avoidance, and work avoidance), self-efficacy, intelligence beliefs...

Why choose to become a teacher in Turkey? The authors examined motivations and perceptions among preservice teachers (N = 1577) encompassing early childhood, primary and secondary education. The Factors Influencing Teaching Choice (FIT-Choice) instrument was translated into Turkish and its construct validity and reliability assessed. Altruistic ‘so...

In this international, longitudinal study, we explored gender differences in, and gendered relationships among, math-related motivations emphasized in the Eccles (Parsons) et al. (1983) expectancy-value framework, high school math participation, educational aspirations, and career plans. Participants were from Australia, Canada, and the United Stat...

Disturbing evidence documenting some teachers’ aggressive classroom management (mis)behaviour is growing. Relative to the importance of this issue, the level of research activity into the area is small (Sava, 2002). Writing about teacher aggression is widespread in the non-English literature: in France, Romania, Russia, and Spain (Sava, 2002). Repo...

Educational psychologists have, over the last half century or so, directed their attention to the study of student motivation. While teachers have not entirely been ignored, there has been little inquiry into teacher motivation that has been systematic and theory-driven. The concentration on students has tended to overlook the centrality of teacher...

Gender differences in the development of children's and adolescents' academic self-perceptions have received increasing attention in recent years. This study extends previous research by examining the development of mathematics self-concept across grades 7–12 in three cultural settings: Australia (Sydney; N=1,333), the United States (Michigan; N=2,...

This study investigated adolescents' developmental trajectories of mathematics interest and explored related effects of gender, family, and school context. Latent growth curve modeling was used to analyze longitudinal data of N=3,193 students (51% female) from grades 5 to 9 from all 3 ability tracks of the German state school system. Annual assessm...

Despite a burgeoning of law schools in Australia in the last 15 years, there has been very little exploration of the expectations and aspirations of students commencing a law degree in Australia. By contrast, a number of studies on features of professional life for practising lawyers are emerging. In particular, recent studies have shown high level...

Men and women tend to end up in different kinds of occupations. This phenomenon is extraordinarily robust across different settings (see Watt & Eccles, 2008), although there is certainly also cultural variation; good illustrations are women’s higher representation in the sciences in India and the former Soviet Socialist Republics than in other coun...

This study examines prospective "STEM" [Science, Technology, and Mathematics] teachers' motivations for undertaking a teaching career and their perceptions of the teaching profession, for undergraduate and graduate teacher education entrants from three major established urban teacher provider universities in the Australian States of New South Wales...

The professional plans, satisfaction levels, demographic characteristics, perceptions and motivations of different teacher types distinguished by cluster analysis were investigated among graduate-entry primary and secondary teacher education candidates (N = 510) from three Australian universities in an ongoing longitudinal study. Participants provi...

This article presents latent growth modeling, a particular application of multilevel modeling, to examine the development of adolescents' math- and English-related talent perceptions and intrinsic values which are emphasized by Expectancy-Value theory as important precursors to a range of achievement-related outcomes. The longitudinal cohort-sequen...

Despite concentrated research and important legislative milestones on gender equality over the past quarter century, gender-related disparities in science, technology, and math careers persist into the 21st century. This persistence sustains a troubling state of gender inequity in which women are not sharing in the salary and status advantages atta...

The authors apply current influential models from the motivational literature to develop the comprehensive factors influencing teaching choice (FIT-Choice) scale, to measure factors influencing the choice to teach for beginning preservice teacher education candidates. They validate the scale using 2 large cohorts (N = 488; 652) and describe the fac...

This study examines prospective "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) teachers' motivations for undertaking a teaching career and their perceptions of the teaching profession, for undergraduate and graduate teacher education entrants from three major established urban teacher provider universities in the Australian States of Ne...