Jesús Ángel Tapia-López

Relevance. This paper analyzes the professional motives of teachers working at primary schools from the perspective of Activity Theory, considering that the teachers' motives are relevant for organizing the teaching-learning process.

Goals. This study aimed to analyze the professional motives of primary school teachers and their relationship with the teaching-learning process.

Methods and sample collection. Three sixth grade teachers participated in semi-structured interviews to analyze their motives and their impact on the teaching-learning process based on: a) teachers and b) school context and the interactions related to the teaching-learning process. The analysis of the motivational sphere was conducted utilizing the Activity Theory paradigm and the Cultural-Historical approach, researching the motives that underlay the teaching-learning process. The interviews were analyzed using the typology of motives proposed by Talizina (2019), according to specific indicators.

Results. We offer a classification of teachers’ motives regarding the teaching-learning process. These motives are distributed heterogeneously across our proposed indicators; some motives are similar for each teacher, and other motives exhibit great disparity. Also, we observed great differences between the profile of motives across two teachers, one working at a private school and the other working at a public school.

Conclusions. The findings suggest the existence of internal positive motives in the teacher’s professional activity.