Teachers’ Motivations for Initiating Innovations

• In Event: Teacher Agency for Professional and Personal Growth

Abstract

Thirty K-16 Midwestern teachers of academic subjects stated in interviews that their self-initiating classroom innovations were precipitated by catalytic events and motivated by both professional and personal reasons. Catalysts were most often formal learning situations of the teachers’ own choosing, but catalysts were also the realization of personal boredom and conversations with the teachers’ own children. The professional motivator of all participants was to increase student learning, often because textbooks did not meet students’ needs, but the most frequently stated personal motivator was to avoid personal boredom. Overall, 57% of K-16 teachers cited a personal boredom factor as influential in their decision to self-initiated innovation, and two-thirds of this group noticed boredom within their first three years of teaching.

Author

• Wendy S. Emo, University of Minnesota - Morris