What Makes Teachers Tick?

Hey everyone, just jumping in here to let you know that the recording quality of this episode was not up to the usual standard. We had a few issues in the studio when recording, but I've decided to release it anyway because I think the message is still important and still you can hear everything fairly clear. I promise you next episode we will get back to that usual high quality standard, but for now, enjoy. What made you want to go into education?

Was it because you just absolutely love children? Or was it something else? And if it's something else, do you ever feel guilty about that? Today I'm going to explore this myth that teachers just have to be in it for the children as their primary motivation and actually unpick how motivations are a little bit more complex than that. Stay tuned.

Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leland. Welcome to Education Leaders, the chart-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. You know, as an organizational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders think with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams. And in this show, I give you the strategies that are going to help supercharge your leadership, give you that little bit more confidence.

And I'm really happy that this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association, so stay tuned to learn more. So a couple of weeks ago, I was in the UK, spent a good week, actually a really packed week, doing a few different things, including launching our new bug change stats here, but also attending the Festival of Education. And when I was there, it was a pretty amazing experience. You can go every year. If you haven't been, this festival is thousands of educators, one of the biggest in Europe that all descend on the grounds of Wellington College in the UK.

It's got proper outdoor festival vibes. And there's panels, there's talks, there's discussions, there's things happening outside. There's so much to do as an educator. It's really, really cool.

But I was speaking with my friend, Hylie Hughes, while there actually, and she noted that many of the panels were not necessarily diverse. And by that, meaning there weren't that many teachers on the panels. There was a lot of consultants, experts, authors, policymakers, but not so much teachers. And this really got me thinking about, is that a problem that they're not there?

Is it something we need to push for more? Or do festivals actually attract a certain type of person? And this then really got me thinking about teacher motivation. Actually, what motivates teachers? What motivates teachers to even go to a conference like this?

And it took me back to that thing that I've heard so much time. Oh, you're a teacher. You must love children. The prerequisite of a teacher is they must absolutely love children. That must be their number one.

Now, I'm going to make an admission here. When I went into teaching, I wasn't primarily motivated by the love of children. It's something different for me. In fact, me and Emma, we don't have children ourselves.

It's not that we're just driven by this love of children. I think that's okay. If I was to describe my motivation in education, I would definitely say I have a bit of political activism. It's probably why I do podcasts. It's probably why I went into English as additional language teaching to really serve those underserved students.

And I get a real kick out of breaking down barriers, making sure that education is a really good tool to improve the planet, of course, through the children that we're serving. But it's not just that I just adore children. I think it's really important. That's the difference between do you love children and a political reason?

And there are actually so many different reasons teachers actually choose to teach. There's actually a good study that was done way back in 2007, actually, by Helen Watt and Paul Richardson. And they did what's called fit choice scale. They looked at why teachers choose what they do.

They did quite a big study over a thousand participants. They did a longitudinal follow up as well and did this across different countries. What's interesting is that they found that teaching motivations are actually more similar than different across cultures, but there are a variety of factors. Now, I've got them here in front of me, 12 motivational factors from them. I'll quickly run through them for you, but I want to focus in on a few after this.

So there's working with children, improving social equity. Maybe we've just covered those two, influencing children's future, making a social contribution, job stability, labor mobility, work-life balance, intrinsic value of career, perceived ability, previous teaching experiences or learning experiences, social influences and fallback career considerations. Now, they found that working with children is absolutely a significant motivator, but there were four other really highly rated motivators. One was the social utility value of education. One is just the intrinsic value of teaching in itself. One was their ability, their perceived ability to be able to teach might drive someone into the career.

And another was positive prior learning experiences, their experience of learning in the past. So as a school leader or as anyone in a leadership position, I think understanding the motivations of those on your team is really crucial to be able to lead effectively. In fact, if you don't know why your team are in it, maybe that's the next conversation you want to have. But here are a few examples of why a teacher might be in it. So let's start with that first one that I mentioned, what we might call child-focused teachers.

These are like teachers who are educated or leaders who are really energized by working with young people. And they really light up when they work with them, whether that's understanding or just a connection with the students. They develop these deep student relationships and are really motivated by that. This is kind of the child-focused mentality. And of course, we want teachers to be really child-focused.

We have to be a little bit careful, though, because this can become distorted when in our leadership practice. We think, okay, children are first. We have to also be thinking as a leader that children might be first in our school. But to get there, we might have to put our staff first.

It reminds me of the brilliant book by John Thompson and Johnny Ollie called Plotting Staff First. If you haven't got it, what are you doing? Get it on your bookshelf. It's brilliant. I'll link it in the show notes.

They talk about the student-first mentality being a bit of a problem because sometimes it means teachers are put second. And that can lead to overwhelming expectations on teachers that just burn them out. So sometimes when you see schools with a student-first mindset, it can be not a red flag, but something to look out for to go, are teachers being looked after? The main premise of Thompson and Ollie's book is that if you put staff first and they've got those motivators, then they're going to put students first. So I really like that as a distinction.

Now, the second type of teachers, and funnily enough, I hear a lot about these type of teachers at the minute. You see a lot, especially in the online discourse, about technical craft teachers, if you like, craftspeople, who have a love of a craft of teaching. They love that technical aspect. So they might be teachers who really get into that cognitive science research and go, I love how when A plus B equals C, I love then adapting with that.

I love following these brilliant research that's coming out. They might keep up to date with it, and they're constantly refining their craft. And they get excited about refining their craft and growing their knowledge and their body and getting better at what they do. That's a different type of motivation than just being in it for the love of students.

This is about technical craft. That's really useful information because those two types of teachers, both brilliant, both motivated by very different things. And that brings to the third type, which is probably where I maybe fit into this, these social justice warriors, if you like, people who are motivated by equity, social change. You will find this a lot in schools, especially in state sectors around the world, but also in international schools for a variety of reasons.

I'm really lucky to be working with UWC College in Changshu in China. And they are relentlessly focused on intercultural understanding and internationalism, like this real social purpose to what they do. It drives a specific type of teacher to then the social justice warriors, if you like. Now, they might not be so motivated by that technical craft.

They might not be just thinking, I mean it for the love of students, but they're thinking they want to change something. Now, think about those three types of teachers alongside each other. Just take a moment. Those are three very different motivations, all equalling someone who is passionate about education, but for very different reasons.

As I'm talking, I'd like you to think, can you utilise that? Is that a barrier to you as a leader, or is there something you can be doing with this? This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Now, I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years, they've been around for 30 years, and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world.

I really, really love that at their core is a model for improving learning. And this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. So if you're interested, and I really do recommend you check them out, head over to internationalcurriculum.com.

So the next type of teacher I think is really interesting are these teachers who love the community. They love being around people and they're motivated in their job by being around students, but also being around staff by collaborating. They love learning communities. They're very much going to be up for collaborative projects and schools and education are great places to be around people and to collaborate, so that can be a strong motivator.

The fifth is an obvious one. You're finding this, especially in secondary schools, as subject enthusiasts. Maybe you're passionate about history, or you're passionate about biology, you're passionate about sports, and that drives you in to teaching your subject because your subject is the passion and you're really excited about continuing learning your subject and you want to share that passion, share that love with the students that you're serving. So that's yet another type of motivation teachers have.

And you may be noted as we're going through, yes, there's going to be bits and beats, right? You're probably not just one typology and it's a bit dangerous to kind of put everyone in a box. So there's going to be different motivations and definitely motivated by community aspect, social justice. I like a bit of the technical craft as well, but there's going to be probably some areas that you lean into much heavier than others that are motivating you in your day-to-day.

And one more I want to raise, and if this is you, this is okay. This is a stability seeker. Teaching can be seen as a stable job. There's practical benefits.

Maybe there's good job security, for example. Maybe there's deemed to be ability to spend holidays with the children if you've got children because you get the school holidays too. There's many reasons. Maybe it's for a pension scheme or something like that that you get as part of a government, a state role, for example.

There are definite reasons why some people choose education as a good, stable job. And don't judge that because think about it. Just take a step back. A teacher who is financially secure and feeling balanced, it's often more effective.

So that motivation can actually be a really useful motivation to understand and know because then you know how to support that teacher a little bit better. So why does this matter? I think there's three reasons why this matters to you as a leader, understanding those typologies. I'll list those typologies out in the show notes so you can go back to them.

I think one is it has a real impact on your recruitment. When you're advertising for teachers, if you just talk about making a difference to students' lives, you're going to attract a specific person. If you just talk about the technical craft of teaching, you're going to attract a specific person. Now, that might be what you want.

You might want to gather certain teachers that meet a certain profile, and some schools do this really effectively. Even some teacher training programs I've seen have kind of really gathered a set of very alike types of teachers. Or you might want that diversity. But being aware in your recruitment and what messages you're putting out there, looking at the balance of your team and going, where do we need people in this team?

Are we needing social justice people because we've got gaps where we're wanting to run? Are we needing people who are going to be in it for the long term who want some stability? There's different reasons, and you might want to work on your messaging externally for that. Secondly, you're going to be able to impact motivation, and therefore, you're going to be able to impact retention, teacher attention in your school.

So if you're talking to a teacher and you have got a technical crafty teacher in front of you and you are just talking about student relationships, you might be actually turning them off, because they might be saying, I want a leader who's going to challenge me in my craft. I want a leader who's going to be talking about how I move the student learning on through the technical aspects of my job. And you might just be pitching that totally, totally wrong. So this can be really useful in terms of understanding who's in front of you, understanding what their motivators are and how you adapt.

And third, it's really good for staff deployment, of course, like actually understanding where you want to place staff. If there's a community project coming up and you already know the types of staff who are motivated by a community aspect, well, maybe they'd be the first people you get in touch with. Maybe you're thinking of bringing in a new system into your school, and you want someone to check it to make sure, is this rigorous? You might have a bank of teachers.

You're really into that cognitive science stuff, and they might be really giddy about exploring this and kind of weighing it up. You've got a team there. You can lean into it. It's something Efrem and I talk a lot about in our book, which I suggest here, is that in your teams, you have such diversity across your community, so many different motivations.

Understanding that is your first step, and then utilizing it, capitalizing on that, is going to really be your superpower in the school. You know, it made me think, coming back to the Festival of Education, which was brilliant, it really got me thinking, okay, so the teachers who were there, could it be possible that the festival itself was attracting a very specific subset of teachers? Teachers motivated by a specific thing, maybe professional growth, maybe it was networking, maybe their subject expertise, and they were looking for subject matter. Would understanding those motivations help us contextualize maybe what we were seeing at the festival, and then maybe help us to plan on how we democratize such kind of conferences, how we bring people together in a more sustainable and equal way, which gives equal voice, but also just allows for that natural joy for the different areas that brought us into teaching in the first place.

So this week, I want to start a bit of a challenge for you, and I appreciate many of you are on summer holidays, but I wonder if you've got a teacher friend or a teacher who you connect with who you might be able to have a chat to, and have a conversation with them, what motivates them, not what should motivate them, but really what does motivate them. You might have to set this up in a bit of a safe way to kind of explain where your thinking's coming from and why you're having this appreciation, maybe even share with them the different types to give them an idea of what you're thinking about and see what motivates them. Really listen to that response and think, if I was thinking as a leader going forward, where might I start to align opportunities with that motivation and try and move past that simplistic myth about that motivation. There is such a rich diversity of motivations in your school, and I think that is pretty exciting.

Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning. Big thanks to Pete McGill for editing this show and for original music by Guillermo Silva, and thank you so, so much for tuning in today. If we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week. If you want to learn more about the brilliant work from the International Curriculum Association, head to internationalcurriculum.com.