On Teaching Motives and Incentive Strategies of Application-Oriented College Teachers

Abstract

Application-Oriented colleges, relatively new in China’s higher education, are mainly originated from vocational colleges and Application-Oriented colleges, whose flexible management and interior competitive mechanism of survival of the fittest. This paper, by analyzing the characteristics of English teachers’ demand and by means of literature review, observation, interview and questionnaire survey, classifies the motivations of English teachers in Application-Oriented colleges into four categories, namely, material benefits, aspiration and ambition, educator’s mission, and benevolence. It makes further efforts, based on Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, to reveal the importance of creating a harmonious working environment and appropriate motivation mechanism in the fully exertion of teachers’ self-efficacy. This paper suggests at its end that college administration should free teachers from their psychological burden and build up their work incentives by improving their working and living environment, establishing a fair competition mechanism, and inspiring their self-efficacy, thus achieving sound development alongside with the colleges.