Catalogo de Investigaciones 2018-2019

114 EDUCACIÓN Experiences of Puerto Rican ESL Teachers on Motivation and Student Outcomes The fundamental purpose of the current research was to explore the experiences of Puerto Rican ESL teachers of Ponce School District on teachers´ motivation and students´ outcomes in English, describe Puerto Rican English teachers´ motivation, and analyze Puerto Rican teachers´ experiences about motivation and their students´ outcomes. This qualitative research study used phenomenological design to explore the experiences of ESL teachers on teacher’s motivation and student’s outcomes. The goal of this phenomenological design was to seek understanding of experiences of an individual with a certain phenomenon. This design was to be able to describe individual experiences of the phenomenon of motivation. The findings of this research bring attention to the important issue of ESL teachers’ motivation in Puerto Rico. Furthermore, it was shown that any changes in the educational system in Puerto Rico that promotes higher levels of teacher’s motivation should result in improved levels of education of the students. Therefore, teacher’s motivation should be included as part of working resources in the educational system. This research should also be taken in consideration where participants specifically addressed a need for teaching improvement in Puerto Rico. In this investigation four limitations were presented, which could affect the findings. First, the scarce literature on teacher motivation in public schools in Puerto Rico that hindered possible comparisons and analysis with the sample studied. Second, studies on Self Determination Theory on the basic psychological needs of teachers were scarce. Third: the sample consisted of teachers from the southern sector of the island of Puerto Rico, thus the findings cannot be generalized to the whole population. Additionally, this research can be used to promote teachers’ basic psychological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, to improve ESL teachers’ motivation and hence students´ outcomes. yumaitza medina velázquez doctorado en educación con especialidad en currículo y enseñanza mentor: dra. marta fontanez long esl teachers experiences motivation student outcomes phenomenological design