RELATIONSHIP OF MOTIVATION FOR STUDYING WITH PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS IN A ROMANIAN PRESCHOOL TEACHERS SAMPLE

The present study sought to investigate the aspects of academic motivation using the MUSIC scale. The hypothesis was that perceptions of own motivation for study are related to the professional qualifications already achieved. The sample of this study consisted of a voluntary group of 98 students, all of them already working as preschool teachers, mainly enrolled in the Master's Programs: Educational Management - first and second year and Psychopedagogy of Early Education - first and second year. The study had a cross-sectional design. Two types of statistical analyses were performed: Spearman correlation and GLM multivariate analysis. Interpretation of results from this study suggested that the hypothesis of the study was only partially confirmed, in the correlational analysis only three motivation dimensions presented statistically significant relationships and in the second analysis only Interest dimension was statistically significantly influenced by the professional qualification already obtained (the Grad_nr. variable). It is considered that the difference between significant results obtained using correlation analysis and GLM multivariate analysis is due to the way these analyses work, the first one considers the whole group and the second one tests the prediction in each subgroup of the sample. But, even considering this limitation, results obtained in this study indicate that professional development can be a useful indicator for further motivation to improve themselves as professionals and for making efforts to obtain a higher professional qualification.