Teacher motivation for participating in school innovations - supporting factors

Abstract

The successful implementation of school innovations is based on teachers’ motivation taking part into this innovation. We examine teachers’ motivation and its supporting conditions within the scope of two school innovation projects. Self-determination theory and person-object-theory of interest provide the theoretical background for these studies. Furthermore we investigate in how far certain incentives are able to activate motivation. Results show that an important factor regarding the motivation to participate in a project of school innovation is the attachment of signifi cance to the innovation. Interestingly, the basic needs (for autonomy, competence and relatedness) captured in both studies resulted in different kinds of infl uences for motivational types based on self-determination. In addition, the examined incentives have also shown effects on controlled types of motivation.