Teacher demotivational factors in the Japanese language teaching context

Just as motivation is important in SLA research, demotivation constitutes an important factor. Despite the importance of demotivation in general, only a limited number of studies exist on teacher demotivation.The aim of this paper is to examine sources of demotivation among language teachers in Japan. This study investigating teacher demotivation among 97 college teachers demonstrated that of 37 items, five out of the top seven items are related to student attitudes. The least motivating items are related to teaching material and discrepancy in student abilities though many responded that ‘No consistency in curriculum with clear goals’ would demotivate them further. The results also showed that culturally specific and school specific factors may lead to demotivation as well.