Designing a School Behavioural System to Optimize the Workplace Motivation of School Teachers

Abstract

To develop a systems approach to school education and management, it is necessary that schools be redesigned as behavioral systems. A motivational system within a school system will have policies, practices, and processes aligned to maximize workplace motivation of an essential stakeholder. Teachers are very important to the success of a school system and its ultimate outcome. Studies have shown that motivated teachers lead to better student outcome and thus a behavioral system which seeks to maximize the workplace motivation of school teachers will be of great value to modern school design and management. The present paper draws on the empirical findings from the previous studies of the researchers to design a behavioral system for schools which will deal with the various factors that affect workplace motivation of school teachers. It is posited in this paper that peers, management, infrastructure, students, social, personal life, and work form a system consisting of various internal components which influence the internal motivational system of teachers. The internal motivational system of teachers consists of clash, esteem, process, security, relation, comfort, and hindrance components. The study seeks to design a system incorporating all the components that constitute the motivational system of individual school teachers. This study has potent implications for school management to help create schools which seek to optimize teacher motivation in a systemic manner in order to augment the efficacy of the teaching learning processes.

Keywords: Motivation, Teacher, System, School Management, School Organisation

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