Dan Pink on Motivation in Business.

Comment

Comment by Tim Furman on February 6, 2010 at 3:28pm

Merit pay is an umbrella term for a hundred different ideas, many of which are badly conceived and poorly executed. In my mind, Pink’s ideas on motivation support one type of merit pay—the independent school model, in which a teacher candidate can negotiate her/his salary at any time, including the initial hire. The public model, in which districts impose arbitrary five year caps on previous service, is absurd. In fact, it should be illegal.

Normally I would lurk for a while before chiming in.. Sorry.

By the way, independent schools also have various other merit pay schemes, and it's likely that many of these schemes contravene what we know about motivation, as Pink points out.

Comment by Dallas McPheeters on February 6, 2010 at 2:26pm

Gotta love sociology! So incentives work well for streamlining behavior within known processes but slow down progress in problem solving arenas. Merit pay would be a bad idea therefore. I'm for "adequate" pay. That's all.

Teaching is a profession. Professionals need (according to Dan Pink) autonomy, mastery, and purpose within the structure of their profession. Today's educational institution is top-down controlled, based on lowest common denominator as the baseline, and experimental.

I wrote about Democracy in the Classroom (link below) last year but only focused on the Teacher–Pupil relationship. However, the principles are the same for the Admin–Teacher relationship IMHO.

This intriguing 1945 video shows what I mean: democracy-in-the-classroom-of-1945-and-today