Teacher motivation and teaching quality: Situation‐specific and process‐oriented perspectives

Background and Aims Teacher motivation is key to high‐quality instruction and positive student outcomes. While its links to teaching and student development are indicated by a series of studies, less is known about the situational processes connecting motivation to teaching behaviours. This special issue addresses this research gap and has the objective to bring together contributions that enable a better understanding of the process‐oriented character of teacher motivation, instruction, and their interrelations with student outcomes. Results This editorial and the contributions in this special issue extend current knowledge on the process‐oriented character of teacher motivation, instruction, and their interrelations with student outcomes. The contributions all empirically investigate situation‐specific processes that relate to teacher motivation and teaching behaviours, or broaden perspectives on the situatedness of teacher motivation and instruction. Conclusions Integrating theoretical approaches on teacher motivation and instruction and applying process‐oriented methods to study the situatedness of both enable research to advance theoretical developments in the field and to derive insights for both empirical research in educational psychology and educational practice.