ABSTRACT
The study aimed to determine the observed public junior high school science teachers' academic procrastination and motivation in the new normal as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study adopted a descriptive approach using in-depth interview questionnaire to examine and acquire a comprehensive understanding of the teachers’ academic procrastination and motivation in the new normal. The qualitative-phenomenological study collated the answers of the respondents to the questions focused on. The participants of the study were the science teachers of Jaro National High School, District IV-B- Jaro, teaching junior high school students, They were obtained purposively from 16 Grade 7-10 teachers (4 teachers each year level), either male or female, with ages 25 years old and above. The data in the study, were gathered through the use of an unstructured interview questionnaire. After the interview the themes were drawn from the data of the participants, and were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results of the study revealed that the academic procrastination and motivation of public junior high school science teachers in the new normal was mainly affected by several factors, such as distractions from external influences, monetary challenges, job dissatisfaction, health concerns, and acts of being professional.
Keywords: Academic Procrastination, Motivation, Junior High School, Intervention Program
INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused systemic shifts in learning and teaching activities from offline to online-based, which caused teachers a delay on their academic work and gave rise to academic procrastination. Academic procrastination, which refers to students' and teachers' deliberate postponing of various academic activities, is a common problem among them and has a significant negative influence on their future. It is influenced by a number of variables, including a lack of commitment from teachers, subpar performance, and a failure to meet learning objectives (Tian et al., 2021). Certain circumstances, such as task difficulty and poor task attractiveness, being required to learn alone, and unappealing student qualities, encourage academic procrastination (Klingsieck, 2013).
Moreover, another factor which caused teachers a delay on their academic work is the lack of motivation. Lacking maturity and independence, teachers struggle to manage the learning process and motivate themselves, especially when dealing with challenging or prolonged teaching duties (low adversity quotient) (Zacks and Hen, 2018). Other factors include the unappealing method of information delivery, difficulties adjusting to online learning, unstable connections, and increased cost of using the Internet (Amir et al., 2020; Peixoto et al., 2021; Pelikan et al., 2021; Prasetyanto et al., 2022).
Further, academic procrastination might be caused by a lack of instructional motivation and a desire to complete the duties at hand (Pelikan et al., 2021). Consequently, there are the following problems: the teacher's workload exceeds their financial capacity and availability; the health effects of prolonged use of a laptop or smartphone; the settings at home make it impossible to concentrate; and being overburdened with other tasks (Prasetyanto et al., 2022). Finally, a significant contributor to the high level of academic procrastination and lack of motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic is the unattractiveness of the online learning approach (Latipah et al., 2021; Prasetyanto et al., 2022).
The researcher has personally observed and seen how her fellow teachers and herself struggled with their jobs during the aftermath of the pandemic as public junior high school science teachers. They barely succeeded in finishing their tasks and fulfilling their obligations because they all experienced a variety of external problems such as the struggle to adjust to the abrupt changes in the educational system. Since no research about academic procrastination and motivation has been conducted on public junior high school science teachers, who are in charge of one of the most vulnerable populations during the crisis, it was therefore imperative to look more closely at the effects of academic procrastination and motivation to their profession during the new normal as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researcher looked into how teachers differ in terms of factors like intrinsic desire for learning, passive procrastination, and their experiences with difficulties and accomplishments while teaching and learning, all of which are thought to be crucial for effective learning in many studies.
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