Need satisfaction and achievement goals of university faculty: an international study of their interplay and relevance

Abstract

AbstractPrevious research has successfully used basic psychological need satisfaction and achievement goal approaches for describing the motivations of university faculty for teaching and for explaining differences in faculty experiences, success, and learning. However, the interplay between these motivational constructs has been largely ignored, with only faculty from specific educational contexts being studied—neglecting those from other higher education systems and institution types that potentially differ in the configurations, levels, and effects of their motivations. As combining both approaches and examining multiple educational contexts is essential for a comprehensive theoretical understanding of faculty motivation and generalizable results, we conducted an international study including 1410 university faculty members from German, Indian, and US-American teaching and research universities. Aside from need satisfaction and achievement goals, we measured their positive affect, teaching quality, and professional learning. Results demonstrated measurement invariance of basic need and achievement goal scales regarding language, higher education context, and institution type. We found small differences in motivations between the three higher education contexts and negligible differences between institution types. Task, learning, and relational goals were positively and work avoidance goals were negatively linked to the outcome variables. Need satisfaction sensibly explained differences in pursuit of these goals, and—directly and indirectly through the goals—also the outcome variables. Taken together, these results provide international evidence for the importance of faculty motivation for teaching and illuminate how need satisfaction is relevant for goal pursuit, while both motivation approaches uniquely matter for faculty experiences, success, and learning.