Best Practice: How to motivate teachers for high performance

 

Motivation is a wide field and has become a discipline in its own right within the fields of organisational development, management and learning. The following provides a few simple and easily applicable guidelines which can be applied by school authorities and school leaders to motivate teachers for high performance within the school environment.

• Make teachers aware of the importance of their work to the development of the country and the future of schoolchildren – be concrete and specific – do not apply slogan-like phrases that the teachers already know and have heard many times before.

• Always be fair and unbiased and avoid any kind of favouritism. Bias, lack of equality and favouritism in the workplace act as poison to engagement, team- work and motivation

• Reward excellent performance, initiative, and creativity by showing appreciation, interest and encouragement.

• Delegate responsibilities to individuals and teams in order to promote independence, confidence, commitment and a sense of responsibility

• Always take a constructive stance. Do not overdo criticism of not-so-good performance and never reproach a teacher in public or in front of the students. Invite the teacher to the office and suggest improvement in a friendly, constructive manner.

• Ensure a good work-climate and work environment at the school and make a real effort to achieve it. Details are available elsewhere in this manual.

• Provide support and guidance to teachers both professionally and personally.

• Care about teacher wellbeing and job-satisfaction and address deficiencies by initiating improvements.

• Encourage initiative and creativity in teaching which make the work fun for both teachers and pupils while enhancing effective learning at the same time.

• Promote teamwork amongst teachers. This gives social fulfilment and at the same time enhances the quality of teaching, school planning, extracurricular activities, etc. Teamwork may comprise common school planning, extra-curricular activities, community orientated activities or engaging pupils in assignments across subjects.

• Stimulate professional development through encouraging subject interest; organising academic events; providing links and access to self-studies, literature and newsletters; providing opportunities for research and academic pursuits like writing articles and engaging in newsletters; facilitating learning and development and participation in conferences; and allocating space for and encouraging participation in professional associations, communities of practice, and in other ways. 

• Organise social events at the school to promote a sense of belonging to a family. This might include sports events, dance, music and theatre performances, events with parents, celebrations, etc.