Incentives based on external norms
When working with others to create change for improvement, how do you deal with the question “What’s in it for me?”
What are the incentives for teachers to change their practice?
Which of these are external, and which are internal?
Which of them can you influence?
Individuals are embedded in institutional structures that provide them with incentives to act in certain ways, and they respond to these incentives by testing them against their values and their competence.
Elmore, 1996, page 27
Elmore argues for the creation of new incentive structures that will motivate educators to change their teaching practice. His argument is based on the premise that all educators are capable of teaching well if they have the motivation and support to do it. He says that what is needed is a different kind of professional standard that communicates to educators a set of expectations for good teaching practice. These “strong professional and normative structures” would then provide a basis for serious reflection and discussion about the components of good teaching practice – reflection and discussion that would lead, over time, to the diminution of trait theories of competence. Educators “would begin increasingly to think of themselves as operating in a web of professional relations that influence their daily decisions, rather than as solo practitioners inventing practice out of their personalities, prior experiences, and assessments of their own strengths and weaknesses” (page 31).
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