Analysis of Motivation for Young College Teachers’ Development from the
Perspective of Two-factor Theory
Wen-qi Chen
Department of Psychology
Beihua University, Jilin City, Jilin Province, China 132013
(e-mail:rqr000719@126.com)
Abstract - Taking the analysis of the behavior dynamics
of the intellectuals as the background, the two-factor theory
achieved the motivation principal and strategies with
remarkable practical value. For the young college teachers,
who are, as a whole, a part of the intellectuals, the two-factor
theory which emphasizes on the motivation factors and the
hygiene factors has corresponding value of practical
application. By the analyzing these factors, the management
can find out the motivation that drives the professional
development of young college teachers. These motivation
may be embodied as attentions paid to the hygiene factors
such as economic hygiene and health protection, and
effective implementation of the motivation factors such as
assessment regulation, career path formulation, allocation of
reaching and teaching resources, development of
professional characteristics.
Keywords - two-factor theory , young college teachers,
hygiene factors ， motivation factors ， development
motivation
I.
INTRODUCTION
The professional development of the young college
teachers plays a most important role for the future
development of colleges. However, more and more young
teachers, especially those in the less developed areas, lack
of development motivation and thus remain unconcerned
for their professional development. As a well-known
motivation theory, the two-factor theory to some degree
overlaps with the colleges from the research perspective.
Therefore the college management tried to analyze the
professional development of young college teachers from
the perspective of the two-factor theory. This will provide
a lead for guiding the development of young college
teachers.
II.
THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG
COLLEGE TEACHERS LACK MOTIVATION
The professional development of young college
teachers is critical for the future development and quality
of the colleges. However the young college teachers often
suffer the conflict between the traditional and modern
profession concepts and are often confused by the
uncertainty of their positions. Even worse, many teachers
present the “role marginalization” characteristics[1], such
that they have less or even no motivation for professional
development, which are correspondingly related to the
self-positioning of the young teachers.
A. Employee tendency
Under the current circumstances, colleges usually set
up their principals in alignment with the economy, profit
and efficiency, and accordingly become enthusiastic of
maximally interfering and utilizing all resources and even
pursuing uniformly selecting teaching materials and
courseware. The colleges may also introduce competition
mechanism so as to adapt the career paths of the teachers
in accordance with the demands of the colleges. Quick
outcomes are more favorable, and salary and remuneration
are paid in accordance with the achievement and
professional title. In this scenario, teachers are more likely
the employees of colleges, and they have no energy to
develop their own advantaged ability. Lots of young
teachers have no time and energy to make selforientations; therefore the professional development is
passive.
B.
Pragmatic tendency
The prime problem that young teachers are going to
face when they first start their career is to earn their lives.
They hope that their social reputation could be well
maintained, and at the same time they also hope to
improve their income. Some teachers choose to take parttime jobs and seek for other approaches to get rich.
Unavoidably, their profession development will be
deterred by the pragmatic tendency, and the development
motivation is fading.
Such an abnormal condition of teacher’s professional
development shall be attributed to failure of the colleges
and the society to effectively take care of the
psychological situation and demand and the pressure
overloaded on the shoulders of the teachers. Viewing
from the perspective of the two-factor theory, the
management of the colleges could be helped to find out the
motivation factors for driving the professional
development of the young teachers, thus adopting
corresponding measures and eventually stimulating the
young teachers to proactively, enthusiastically develop
their professional career paths.
III. ANALYSIS OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVATION
OF YOUNG COLLEGE TEACHERS FROM THE VIEW OF THE
TWO-FACTOR THEORY
There are many related theories in management
psychology and each has its advantages and disadvantages
and application object. However, the two-factor theory is
particularly adapted for the professional development
characteristics of young college teachers on the research
background and research content. This theory has an active
application value for the profession development
motivation of young college teachers.
A. Main Concept of the two-factor theory
The Two-factor theory (also known as motivation hygiene theory and TWO - Factor Theory) was proposed
by Frederick Herzberg, a US behavior scientist.
According to the two-factor theory, Herzberg adopted
“key affair method”, in which he inquired many engineers
and accountants [2], and finally he concluded that job
characteristics related to what an individual does — that is,
to the nature of the jobs he takes — apparently have the
capacity to gratify such needs as achievement,
competency, status, personal worth, and self-realization,
thus making him happy and satisfied. However, the
absence of such gratifying job characteristics does not
appear to lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction, the
motivation factors are needed in order to motivate an
employee toward a better performance [3], and these factors
result from internal generators in employees. Instead,
dissatisfaction results from unfavorable assessments of
such job-related factors as company policies, supervision,
technical problems, salary, interpersonal relations on the
job, and working conditions, the hygiene factors are
needed to ensure an employee not becoming dissatisfied,
and they do not lead to higher levels of motivation, but
without them there is dissatisfaction[4].
Thus, if management wishes to increase satisfaction
on the job, it should be concerned with the nature of the
work itself — the opportunities it presents for gaining
status, assuming responsibility, and for achieving selfrealization. If, on the other hand, management wishes to
reduce dissatisfaction, then it must focus on the job
environment — procedures, supervision, and working
conditions [5]. On the surface, the motivation factors seem
to be important, but the precondition that these motivation
factors can function is that employees didn’t show
dissatisfactions in the hygiene factors
B. The two-factor analysis addressing young college
teachers
1)
Assurance factors of young college teachers:
The hygiene factors are important precondition to
realize the profession stability of young college teachers.
Most of young college teachers in our country have high
education background, and when they start their careers,
they are going to be thirty. After starting working, they
have to face a series of problems of marriage, bearing
babies, supporting parents, heath caring and so on. They
have to take the family responsibility. The young teachers
are thus very likely made dissatisfied by the reality [6]. A
recent research shows that 75.18% of teachers are
dissatisfied with their salary, while 55.04% of teachers
would consider job-hopping because of the dissatisfaction
with the salary.
a) Economic embarrassment[7]
After years of hard studying, young teachers are
always in an embarrassing economic circumstance, and
even need help from their parents. Therefore, after starting
the job, the primary subject is to seek for the return of
capital investment, and get the desired salary and
compensation. However in China, salary is primarily
correlated with the profession title and the working years.
The fixed amount part of the salary remains the largest part
of the teachers’ income, and therefore no matter how hard
they try, they will face the problem of low income or poor
compensation. A monthly salary of young college teachers
in some less developed regions may be even less than
2000 RMB. Should the salary fail to meet their
expectations and needs, “dissatisfaction” factor occurs, and
this would easily lead to the problems such as that the
professional loyalty reduces, even the full-time job and the
part-time job are reversed, off-campus part-time job is
considered, and professional development motivation
virtually disappears.
b) Insufficient housing provision
Housing is a basic living need for everybody. It has
been well known that one should have been provided with
habitation before he can develop his career. The rising
price of the real property market makes young teachers
unaffordable for the housing demand. The government has
established the housing accumulation fund system to ease
the pressure of buyers. However, it is far from a sufficient
solution for young teachers and that probably because the
calculation of housing fund is also linked with the
profession title and seniority of teachers. Young teachers
didn’t work for a long time and they have lower titles, so
that they have little housing fund to use. The housing
problem remains a heavy burden on their shoulder, and the
weight of which makes young teachers feel out of their
breath.
c) Health distress
A human resource survey shows that it is very
popular for college teachers, especially young teachers, to
work overloaded. They are burned out, and suffer
from malignant disease in an earlier age. The tragedy cases
of sudden death because of work pressure occur here and
there. During the four days before the Spring Festival of
2005, two teachers from Tsinghua University who were no
more than 45 passed away. The Chinese Academy of
Science 32-year-old scholar Xiao Liang was hit by sudden
death. In 2011, a 32-year-old teacher Yu Juan from Fudan
University died from cancer. There are many examples.
Long-term pressure and tire can cause the sub-health
condition of many young teachers. They lack sleep, hurt in
arms and back, have poor eye-sight, high blood pressure,
heart, brain, and blood vessel diseases, gastric ulcer and so
on which are caused by upset and anxious. This is because
young teacher teaches more classes or even overtake
classes or do part-time jobs in order to get higher payment,
and sometimes they have to abandon their ideas and
interests and work passively to enlarge the economy
benefit.
2) Motivation factors of young teachers:
The hygiene factors are preventive, and function for
maintaining the working condition, and thus are also called
“maintenance factors”. The motivation factors drive the
young teachers for professional development. The
motivation factors are corresponded to the teachers’
passion and loyalty to the career, and are further
corresponded to their expectation toward the job and the
desire for personal achievement. The motivation factors
can motivate the teachers to work actively. It is led by the
college policy, academic atmosphere and achievement
space [8]. Once they are dissatisfied, they will feel
profession laches, with low working enthusiastic, or teach
less seriously and even cheat in academic activities. In
March, 2006, the Supervisor Committee of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China issued that in the
twenty negative falsification cases, there were fifteen
college cases, which were done mostly by young teachers.
a) The deficiency of the assessment system and
assessment system
The management strategies that colleges have
introduced in recent years have negative side-effect on the
profession development of young teachers. Taking the
evaluation quantization of teaching research as an example,
when calculating the teaching workload, young teachers
may feel being exploited considering that the number of
classes takes the profession title as the coefficient. They
also feel that their contribution is not reasonably paid back.
Teachers’ researching conditions are taken seriously.
Profession title assessment, research fund, grade
evaluation and the famous teacher nomination are based
on the thesis and research project, while the number of
teaching classes is only required to reach a certain limit.
“Student cultivation” becomes unreachable target. The
professional development of young teachers is dull and
fuzzy or even lost.
b) The absence of profession guidance
When young teachers start their careers, few colleges
will designate experts to help them define their career
paths. Young teachers don’t know the college
development blue print and have no idea about their future
development space. They have to explore and try to find
out their ways and methods to develop. This makes their
profession development lack of target motivation.
c) The unequal distribution of the teaching and
researching sources
Colleges distribute the academic sources such as the
application of the use of the experiment equipments, visit
scholars, the attendance of the academic meetings on the
basis of age, positions and professional titles. Young
teachers are facing the embarrassment that elder teachers’
needs shall be satisfied before theirs. Young teachers have
to undertake the teaching responsibility while colleges
ignore that they should also be provided with different
development space. This unfair allocation of the teaching
and researching resources is called “Stronger ones have all
resources” by the researcher Xu Jilin from the Cultural and
Ideology Institution of Huazhong Normal University. This
is a kind of robbery utilization of young teachers. Even
more, it will leave undiscovered trouble in the future
professional development of young teachers.
d) The unstableness of professional characteristics
The professional characteristics of teachers focuses
more on the professional characteristics tendency of
teachers, such as teaching, cultivating, modeling, devoting,
sacrificing, enthusiastic, strong sense of responsibility and
mission, persistency and so on. These profession
personalities which are respectable are fading away from
young teachers. It seems that young teachers have more
modern characteristics; however teacher is a special career
which has higher criteria for professional characteristics.
The replacement of teachers’ personality with teaching and
researching level and ability is a kind of backward of the
society. Young teachers feel confused between the
economy desire and the profession ideals. The formulation
of the professional characteristics is always interrupted by
the outside environment factors. The guidance and
regulation provided by the society and colleges would be
critical for establishment of the professional
characteristics.
IV.
TWO-FACTOR MOTIVATION STRATEGIES OF YOUNG
COLLEGE TEACHERS IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT
A.
The hygiene factors ensures the stability of young
teachers’ profession development.
1)
The economy security
Necessary conditions shall be provided to ensure
young teachers’ economic condition. Young teachers need
more support in the manner of policy and material
treatment at the beginning of the career. Their living
condition should be cared and the problems they meet in
life should be solved. As to the salary, young teachers
should be paid equally with others without considering the
working ages and profession title, but taking the quality of
class, evaluation of students, principles of teaching, high
level of teaching as the standards of high salary. On the
basic living needs, such as housing, the government should
provide more policies to ensure young teachers having a
house to live in, such as on the down payment, mortgage
rate, and common reserve funds subsidy, and the
government is expected to implement more favorable
policy to help young teachers to ease their burden and
meet their housing need.
2) Health care
Health is not only a personal matter of teachers, but
also a matter of the colleges. Colleges should provide
more health care measures, such as regular physical
examination, sports competition, the advertising of
positive and healthy living ideas, publicizes of various
kinds of body building activity, necessary body building
equipment, the opening of the necessary psychology
consulting lessons or institutions to ease teachers’ inner
pressure and so on. This is the real “people oriented”
which can make young teachers feel more humanistic care.
B.
Motivation factors motivate the intrinsic motivation
of young teachers’ professional development.
The motivation factors have more relations with the
inner feeling of young teachers. It is the cognition of selfeffectiveness, self-evaluation and the possible developing
space during the profession development. It is also the
judgment of career path design and major interest value.
Therefore the changing of motivation is in the young
teachers’ hearts. However, from the point of view of
management, the motivation approaches are extrinsic
which are adaptable and changeable.
1) Improve the assessment system
The assessment system of colleges is a vane, which
can direct the teachers to make some efforts. Teachers’
own profession development interest can not rival the
college assessment system, which often leads to the
profession advantages being pressed and overwhelmed
while disadvantages being outstanding. The optimal
solution is that the assessment system cope with the
profession development needs of young teachers, such as,
in the profession title evaluation in some colleges, “
teaching title” is concerned, the teacher who devote his
energy and profession advantages to the teaching and
educating students and also get high evaluation and fame,
can also be promoted. Therefore, the assessment system
should consider the current condition and development
needs of young teachers and provide possibilities for their
success [9].
2) Provide instructions of professional development
plan to help young teachers draw the professional
development future blue print
No target means any motivation. Professional
development plan can help young teachers realize their life
target location better and make them analyze their
advantages and strong points rationally to form the
potential motivation of their own profession development.
College managers should provide the schooling aims and
purposes and the relevant policies information of colleges,
together with which they can form the proper young
teachers’ professional development plans.
3) Fairly allocate the teaching and researching
resources
More difficulties in the process of young teachers’
profession development are originated from the
insufficiency of development resources. In fact, young
teachers are the potential developing power for colleges,
whose development needs the continuously resources
supply from the colleges, and more opportunities to get
further studying and training, and to attend academic
meetings. This will help young teachers develop and study
more on the professional aspect. If colleges can not
provide proper opportunities to study and train, at least the
academic information resources from the elder teachers
should be conveyed and shared with young teachers.
4) Formulate positive professional characteristics
The professional characteristic of teachers is the soul
of teachers’ profession development. The loss of teachers’
professional characteristics is equivalent to the loss of the
career as a teacher. In such a desiring society, young
teachers should not be criticized because of chasing of
material and treasure. However this should be assessed
upon the bottom line of the profession and knowledge
moral principles. Colleges should provide a positive
cognition environment to individual teacher, and make it
clear that college teachers’ belief and duties through the
pre-service and in-service educational theory and practice.
Young college teachers should improve their introspection
to formulate stable professional characteristics. Facing the
outside world negative temptations and the expectations
from students and the society, the professional
characteristics will be stable on the state of mind and
inflexible on the chasing of the career. As a matter of fact,
with various kinds of imperfect systems, the professional
characteristics are vital in the process of teachers’
profession development.
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