Pre-service teachers’ achievement goal orientations, teacher identity, and sense of personal responsibility: The moderated mediating effects of emotions about teaching

This study examined the relationships among pre-service teachers’ (PTs) achievement goal orientations, emotions about teaching, teacher identity, and the sense of personal responsibility, with the intention of exploring whether the effects of possible interactions between achievement goal orientations and emotions about teaching on the sense of personal responsibility were significantly transmitted through teacher identity. A total of 845 PTs from the faculty of education of a large university located in the Western Black Sea region of Turkey participated in the study. An exploratory-correlational research design was used to examine the relationships among the research variables in an inductive manner. Partial correlation and path analyses were conducted to analyze the data. The results showed that achievement goal orientations, emotions about teaching, teacher identity, and the sense of personal responsibility were significantly related to each other. The results also showed that the effects of interaction between self-related goals and enjoyment on the four aspects of personal responsibility through teacher identity were positive and significant, whereas the effects of interaction between self-related goals and anxiety on the four aspects of personal responsibility through teacher identity were significant, yet negative. The results of the present study suggest that PTs’ emotions about teaching, along with their teacher identity, play crucial roles in their willingness to adopt personal responsibility for the diverse and challenging aspects of the teaching profession.