Teacher motivation is vital for the educational system. For teachers to be motivated their work satisfaction and positive psychological capital are crucial. The state-of-the-art on teacher motivation requires a literature review regarding the studies that relate teacher motivation and the above mentioned constructs. In this paper, through electronic databases, the published studies between 1990-2014 about these issues were identified. A total of 43 studies were obtained. The main conclusions were the following: (a) 2012 was the year with more publications (n = 7; 16.28%); (b) quantitative methodologies (n = 40; 93.02%) and self-report questionnaires (n = 43; 89.59%) were the dominant methodology and instrument type; and (c) work satisfaction was the most studied concept with teacher motivation (n = 42; 97.67%). Our results underline the importance of work satisfaction on teacher motivation and emphasize the need to realize more studies on the relationship between teacher motivation and positive psychological capital.