Analysing the Role of External Policy Interventions in Explaining the Trend of School Educators’ Intrinsic Motivation

This study investigated the role of external policy interventions in explaining the trend of school educators’ professional intrinsic motivation. Through the explanatory sequential design of the mixed study, we first described the trend in the intrinsic motivation of a total of 1 470 school educators between 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 by four-legged cross-sectional sub-studies. Then, we collected retrospective narrative data to give meaning the trend. We analyzed the data by descriptive statistics (F and Ƞ2 tests) and content analysis. At the end of the study, we found out a negative significant trend in educators’ intrinsic motivation as the years progressed. Past experiences of educators indicated the meaningful role of external policy interventions in generating this trend.


Introduction
is also explanatory sequential design of mixed study (Creswell, 2014) because it first collected quantitative data through four cross-sectional studies then collected qualitative data to give meaning the quantitative finding. Figure 1 depicts the study's model, which has three main steps. The first, including four sub-steps, involved in identifying PIMES on different samples in different times. The second step aimed at finding out the trend of PIMES in reference years. The last step investigated the role of EPI in explaining the trend of PIMES. We looked for the compliance of the study with human rights and ethical principles. Its compliance was approved by the relevant board.

Context and Participants
In line with the international trend, Turkey public management has experienced a major transformation for the last 20 years. Along with the New Governance Approach, nation-wide policy interventions were implemented. Introducing a performance-based evaluation system, attempting to change the permanent job status with the contractual one, redesigning the school administration and establishing a telephone line (Alo 147) through which citizens can notify the central authorities about educational matters in school were some of the EPI (Karabağ et al, 2018;TEDMEM, 2018). Teachers denoted the educational policies posed by Ministry as the most problematic area among other problems (Esen, Temel ve Demir, 2017).
The population of this study consisted of teachers and school administrators. The study drew five different samples for each data collection phase. According to Cohen et al. (2007), drawing different samples from the same population overcome the "pre-test sensitization" in longitudinal studies. Participants, who have different professional experiences, came from schools located in the city center, town or village across the country. Table 2 shows the participants' characteristics. We first attained randomly selected 549 educators from the population consisted of a total of 630 teachers and school administrators coming from very different geographical regions between March-June 2012 to participate in Aksaray In-Service Training Institution, which hosts educators and provides them a centrally organized specific training course during five days (EURYDICE, 2019). In the second step, we gathered data from educators attending to the end of school year compulsory seminars organized in June 2014. We first purposefully selected schools located in five different locations in Aksaray province. Then, we randomly selected 241 educators from different subjects in public primary and secondary schools. In the third step, two-stage random sampling was administered. The population consisted of 3 154 educators working in 124 schools located in the city center of Aksaray province in the school year (DNEA, 2016. We grouped schools into separate lists based on the level (primary, lower secondary, upper secondary). To be able to cope with it, we randomly selected schools by 20 % of them from each stratum. The sample consisted of totally 324 educators from 25 schools. The fourth sample included educators coming from different provinces to attend to the inservice training course organized in Aksaray In-Service Training Institution between May-July 2018.
Randomly selected 387 educators participated in the study. For descriptive studies, the minimum sample size was satisfied because it should be over 100 or more than five times the number of items (5x17=85) (Fraenkel et al., 2012;Seçer, 2015).
The last participant group, included 30 educators, was purposefully selected to satisfy the maximum variety. It consisted of educators from different provinces, different education levels, different subjects, and different professional experiences. We reached them through communication information on schools' web pages. Then we phoned them to ask whether to take part in the study.
After getting their approval, interviews were implemented through online communication and all were completed between 25 February and 08 March 2019. We reached the aimed number of interviews after performing the 46 initiatives. The study group consisted of 15 male and 15 female educators. Three of them were administrators and the rest of them were teachers. Three teachers were working at the pre-primary level, 12 of them were classroom teachers and five of them were mathscience teachers. In terms of professional experience, 14 teachers had less than 10-year experience and 11 educators were working in village schools, 12 were in the city center.
In total, the number of female educators (53.7 %) is more than the number of male counterparts (46.3%). When considering the subject variable, classroom (39.8%) and language-social (28.9 %) teachers are represented with higher proportions. The proportion of math-science teachers is 16.7 %. In 2014, there are no pre-primary and classroom teachers and the majority of teachers were language-social. The educational level of school shows the higher proportion rate of primary (45.7 %) and lower secondary (44.9 %) across the years. Participants' professional experience indicates a younger workforce because the proportion of educators working in their first ten-year is nearly half of the whole number. School experience might be important for their motivation level. While one-fourth of them were working in the first year in their current school, nearly half of them were working at the current school for four years or more. 87.2 % of participants have a bachelor's degree and only 6.2 % of them have a master's degree.

Data Gathering Instrument
We used two different instruments. At the first step, in line with the scale development procedures of AERA (1999), we tried to generate a valid and reliable data gathering instrument, which was scaled with five Likert (1: Definitely, it does not express me, 5: Definitely, it expresses me). The validity of the instrument was satisfied by the techniques of criterion validity, independent expert views, and theoretical validity. For criterion validity, we considered the motivation theories (summarized in Table 1) and prior research results. Fraenkel, et al. (2012) defined theoretical validity as developing items based on the theories. Autonomy, purpose, competence, and affiliation are mostly used as the measures of IM (Abos et al., 2018;Guerriero, 2017;Hennefer, 2018;Kıran and Sungur, 2018;Mahler et al., 2018;Pink, 2009;Praetorius, et al, 2017;Ryan and Deci, 2017;Sivertson, 2018).
Three experts, who had doctorate degrees on educational administration, assessment and evaluation and official language, independently examined the instrument. The instrument was redesigned based on their suggestions. We checked its reliability on a pilot study (N=319). We selected participants through two-stage random sampling in the city center schools in Aksaray province. More than half of them were female (54.9%) and very experienced (11 + years=52.7%). Their majority worked in primary (42.6%) and lower secondary (48%). The internal reliability score (Cronbach's Alpha, α=.894) confirmed its reliability. Then, the corrected item-total correlation indicated that M 15 and M 22 were inconsistent with the dimensional structures in EFA because of their lower scores than .30. Therefore, we excluded them from the instrument. After exclusion, scores of the rest of 17 items (Table 3) were between .334≤r≤.710.  (Fraenkel et al., 2012;Seçer, 2015). Items and its descriptive information can be seen in Table 3. There were five dimensions namely self-efficacy, autonomy, affiliation, purposefulness and development-oriented in the data-gathering instrument. Self-efficacy explains that someone has a belief of capability to carry out the task successfully even it is difficult (Bandura, 2001). Autonomy is defined as making a decision on professional matters on your own or with group members (Lauermann, 2017).
As a highly centralized system, the We first asked them to talk about the educational changes they experienced in last ten years (2010-2019). Their past narratives recorded. Then, educators were asked to talk about how these changes affect their professional life relevant to their instrinsic motivation. Similar technique was used by Esthope and Easthope (2000). During the interview when they asked info about these elements of intrinsic motivation, researcher gave brief information about them.

Collecting and Analysing Data
Quantitative data collector was implemented, when participants convened for professional development activity, they filled out the instrument individually. After coding forms and transferring data into the computer, quantitative data were analyzed in IBM SPSS 22 statistical package program.
We first checked the missings, outliers, and duplicates. We performed descriptive statistical techniques (frequency, percent, mean and standard deviation), exploratory factor analysis (EFA), F and PIMES scores as the dependent variable. To find out the effect size of the significant variance, we computed Eta square (Ƞ²). Effect size refers to the ratio of the dependent variable's variance associated with the independent variable. It shows the intersection area of independent and dependent variables (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013). We used Cohen's classification to interpret the amount of effect size. Between .01≤ Ƞ² ≤ .05 is a small effect; between .06≤ Ƞ² ≤ .13 is a medium effect and between .14≤ Ƞ² is a large effect size (Pallant, 2015).
By content analysis we analyzed the qualitative data coming from participants' narrates were first transferred into the Excel worksheet in considering two questions. The researcher and two independent official language teachers, as working together based on the consensus, looked for which events affect their motivation. After identfying the events and their effects on the elements of intrinsic motivation (autonomy, professional goals, professional development, self-efficacy and cooperation with colleagues.) we ordered them based on the recurring patterns.  The relatively lowest score belonged to be purposefulness (2), which contains to have enthusiasm for professional innovations, and to have exciting professional plans in the future and to carry out the professional goals in the present school. Decreases in scores of perception about carrying out the professional goals in the school (Table 3)     but development-orientedness has the medium effect size. The effect size of the change in PIMES scores was significant at the medium level.

Educational Changes in Past Ten Years and Their Effects on PIMES
Semi-structured interviews indicated that educators' professional enthusiasm and goal orientation gradually disappears (n=22) and their striving for professional development weakens (n=19) as years past. Interviewees explained that though there are no frequent external interventions when they perform the job they do not have fully professional autonomy (n=24). All participants expressed having adequate knowledge and skills to be able to carry out the job successfully (n=30); however, they have difficulties in teaching with special needs children (n=9) and asylum-seekers' children (n=6). More than half of the interviewees stated a positive social and professional cooperation among colleagues (n=17).
Interviewees explained why their motivation decreases steadily (n=24). Some of them (n=6) mentioned about decreasing status of the teaching profession in the community. The most disturbing cause is notifying educators through Alo 147 telephone-line to the central authorities and in some cases, an investigation started (n=21). Explanation of X 11 summarizes its effect: "Alo 147 became a tool for punishing educators. False complaints hurt us." Negative rhetoric and accusation of top-level educational administrators about educators in school (n=16) were also mentioned frequently. For instance, X 4 expressed that "I was very upset to see that a national education minister as saying on TV screens that teachers did not work hard." After the military coup in 2016, dismissing some educators from the teaching profession (n=14) seem to worry the rest of educators. X 16 summarized it as saying that "I was very frightened by the dismissal of a friend who I worked with her for many years." Along with the redesigning of school administration, the appointment of school administrators and their job security were abolished, the school administration was defined as temporary duty on teachers (n=11).
X 26 explained her experiences as that "Redesigning the selection system of school administrators ruined the school climate. Very experienced successful administrators were dismissed and they retired or sent to another school as a teacher." The other explanator of this event was the introduction of performance-based evaluation system in education (n=9). Experience of X 17 explains the problematic side of this change: "I could not understand that people who have no professional knowledge and experiences have a role in making the decision about our teaching performance. For instance, students' evaluations of our performance cause many other problems." Qualitative findings coincided with the quantitative findings. They confirmed a declination in their motivation. Furthermore, they explained which events effecting their motivation. Their explanations refer to policy intervention at the national level.

Discussion, Conclusion, Implementation and Suggestion
This study, using a mixed methodology, identified a trend in PIMES at four legged crosssectional surveys (2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018). Then, it retrospectively investigated the role of EPI in explaining the trend in PIMES.
Although there is a negative tendency in PIMES, educators' IM is still high ( =4.28, S=.52).
This level is inconsistent with the majority of prior studies pointed to the medium or low level of perceived IM (Bieg et al., 2017;Hanus and Fox, 2015;Gobena, 2018;Hennefer, 2018;Mahler et al., 2018;Praetorius et al., 2017;Sivertson, 2018). Contextual and methodological differences might lead to such inconsistencies. For instance, in Germany, several studies found a medium level of IM for teachers (Mahler et al., 2018;Praetorius et al., 2017) and for the university students (Bieg et al., 2017 Hanus and Fox (2015), in their longitudinal study, found medium level IM of university students (n=80) in Arizona. On the other context, prior studies found that Turkish teachers have highlevel motivation which is consistent with this study (Demir and Karakuş, 2015;Kıran and Sungur, 2018). Comparing the results of different studies on educators' motivation indicates that Turkish educators perceived their motivation as higher than foreign countarparts did.
The current study figured out the significant negative trend in PIMES between 2012 and relatively shorter period (14 weeks) found stable results (Bieg, et al., 2017;Hanus and Fox, 2015) but Scherrer and Preckel (2019), by Meta-analysis, argued the significant decrease in the perception scores of students' IM in 1.6 year average time.
The current study found a regular decrease in educators' perception about all sub-dimensions of IM. This is the case for affiliation and development orienting. Affiliation as referring to relation, interaction and sharing between educators in school environment, the result means deterioration of interaction among educators. This result together with the decreasing in the score of development orienting refers the weakening of the school based learning (organizational learning). This argument is consistent with the statements of Guerriero (2017) that interaction and sharing among colleagues, as a functional tool of professional learning and specialization, correlated with the performance. Yıldırım (2018) found the positive relationship between the level of interaction between teachers and their learning performance. Furthermore, the motivational cycle proposed by Ryan and Deci (2017) explains that interaction between group members related with not only their performance but also their enthusiasm, learning and competency. In frame of relationship between affiliation and learning performance, the other relevant determiner is whether having challenging goals. Based on the goal theory, making arrangements enabling educators to work together for achieving the school's goals would result in better performance. This situation is also valid for characteristics described by Among the components of PIMES, the lowest average score was belonged to purposefulness that consisted of students' improvement through developing themselves in terms of professional knowledge and skills. Purposefulness also can refer to have intention to get a higher position (Demir, 2019). It drives educators to initiate new things and to be vigorous and vivacious (Lunenburg and Ornstein, 2012;Robbins and Judge, 2015;Schermerhorn, 2012). Decreasing mean score of being purposefulness signals of monotonous and routine professional life that in turn would negatively affect the school improvement. Similarly, negative trend of development orienting indicates the stability, avoidance of challenging professional goals and lack of enthusiasm for improvement. That also negatively affects students' improvement via low quality of teaching activities (Guerriero, 2017).
Collaborative team working for achieving school's goals and leadership can change this scenery, positively.
Current study found a very high-level of self-efficacy perception alike previous studies (Lauermann, 2017;Yıldırım, 2018). In addition, prior studies suggested a powerful relationship between self-efficacy and IM (Pink, 2009;Guerriero, 2017;Ryan and Deci, 2000). However, in this study, deterioration in PIMES (-.37) is much more than that of self-efficacy (-.26) between 2012 and 2018. It weakens the argument of powerful relationship between self-efficacy and PIMES, at least for this study. Instead, to be development oriented seems to be key component of the intrinsic motivation because it had nearly the same trend with that of PIMES and significant positive medium size relationships with the rest of components (purposefulness, affiliation, self-efficacy and authority).
Therefore, development orienting emerged as a promising measure of PIMES. However, self-efficacy is not a functional measure because nearly every educators argue that they have adequate knowledge and skills to be able to carry out the teaching job.
Negative trend in PIMES indicates an educational problem as stated by Pink (2009). Based on this assertion, we can ask that what might be the problem leading to the steady decrease in PIMES.
The results obtained from the qualitative phase of the current study refers to the role of EPI in forming PIMES. This result confirmed the argument of The Motivation Crowding Theory (Frey and Jegen, 2001). Karabağ, et al. (2018) found the negative effect of educational policies on teachers' motivation. Based on the teachers' view, Esen, Temel and Demir (2017) found that the most significant problem is educational policies, which might cause the negative consequences. It can be inferred that educators negatively reacted to these EPIs. For instance, interviewees explained that misusing, exploitation and unfair accusations through Alo 147 resulted in educators' reaction towards political positions. In addition, it refers the way of making and implementing the educational policy.
An international study of OECD showed that 79.2 % of educators in Turkey says that policymakers do not value their views (OECD, 2020). If the genuine views of educators had been known, such EPIs would not have been practiced. Therefore, it can be suggested that educators in school were disregarded in the process of developing and implementing the EPIs. According to Lin and Miettinen (2019) such situation is a typical symptom of a top-down policy. This result also indicates that implementation of an EPI may cause to unintended consequences. For instance, performance based evaluation system resulted in confusion and anger because educators refused to be evaluated by parents and students. Whereas political bodies proposed it as 360 degrees evaluation in education (TEDMEM, 2018). In this regard, external incentives would also intervene the impact of IM on performance (Cerasoli et al., 2014). motivation (Buldu and Er, 2016;Darling-Hammond, 2010;Friedman and Dougney, 2012;Fullan, 2011;Pink, 2009;Schleicher, 2018). For instance, Gobena (2018) stated that EPIs in Ethiopia have adverse effect on teachers' motivation. Recent studies stated a mistrust between managerial bodies and employees in public organizations including public schools (Sevinç, 2015;Uzun, 2020 self-esteem and motivation, civic participation and healthy life style habits (Gajardo and Grau, 2019).
According to Brain et al. (2006), appropriate policymaking strategy utilizes educators' professional knowledge, skills and values. However, nearly two third of educators in Turkey argued that they have no influence on education policy (OECD, 2020). In addition, a professional autonomy within specific contexts can balance between top and down in making policy. Teachers' autonomy means that they make their decision on professional issues and practice them into the professional practices (Lauermann, 2017 (Yıldırım and Yenipınar, 2019). Accordingly, administrative practices at the school level lead to relatively more positive effect on educators' motivation (Bektaş, 2010;Demir and Karakuş, 2015;Helvacı and Başın, 2013;Kıran and Sungur, 2018;Yenipınar, 2018). For instance, Helvacı and Başın (2013) found that school administrators are highly effective ( =3.56. S=.82) in motivating teachers and satisfying the need of teachers' autonomy, affiliation and social relations adequately. Therefore, empowering school leadership can make positive effect on educators' PIMES. Educators' views and experiences delineates that changing in selection system of school administrators violates objectivity, equity and equality principles (TEDMEM, 2018;Yıldırım, 2014). In addition, application of school level institutional inspection play a role in bridging between the policy makers and school educators (Ehren et al., 2015;Schleicher, 2018). However, policymakers limited its role in policymaking (TEDMEM, 2018 perception of affiliation. It means that collaboration among educators in school regularly decreases over the years that is a challenging problem for educational administrations. Top-level administration should cooperate with school educators in order to avoid using inappropriate policy instruments. Lack of positive interaction between higher administrators and school educators leads to harmful effects in making policy and finding appropriate policy instruments. Harmonising the authority between top and down in constructing EPI is likely to enhance PIMES. For implementation of the results, we suggest an establishing mechanism working on school autonomy accompanied with educators' accountability despite it is a challenging task for educational administration. In frame of hygiene theory, having confidence in educators and giving them authority and responsibility balanced by accountability would result in enhancing their PIMES.
Finally, this study make some suggestions for future researchers. This study has no causal argument for the role of EPI in explaining the trend in PIMES. Designing such study might contribute to the research realm. Furthermore, the studies focusing on the relationship between IM of employees working in different conditions and their performances can contribute on our knowledge about the IM. Measuring the IM needs still be improved regarding professional groups and contextual conditions. Being development oriented and purposefulness are the more applicable measures of IM instead of self-efficacy. In addition, next researchers had better improve the measuring power of autonomy and purposefulness by adding new items. For its validity, consistency between conceptuality and applicability of the educators' IM might be studied. Therefore, we suggest the longitudinal studies on PIMES in different contexts.
The last note that when this report has been written, ALO 147 Telephone Line has been announced to close by the new Minister of National Education. Beside this intervention, high-ranking positions' positive rhetoric about educators seems to trigger a positive change in educator's motivation.