What Inspires Motivation in Educators ... a Daniel H. Pink Perspective
The following is a guest blog by Jennifer Peterson, a second-year doctoral student in Educational Administration and Policy Studies at The George Washington University. Jennifer is currently researching what motivates educators in schools and how that trickles down to the motivation of students.
I was fortunate to be present at the Mission-Driven Management Summit in Washington, D.C., to hear Daniel H. Pink share his views on motivation in the work place. He expounded on three elements that he writes about in his book "Drive", those elements are Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
The biggest take away from the summit for me was what Mr. Pink describes as FedEx Days in the work environment. As he shares, FedEx days were created by an Australian company that encouraged employees to "spend a day working on problems they wanted to solve, even if it wasn't part of their regular job."
The Australian company quickly learned that by giving their employees autonomy it opens the doors to motivation and innovation. The company shares, "some of the coolest stuff we have in our product today has come from FedEx Days."
I soon began to think how can FedEx days be transferred into a school environment which allows for motivation and creativity amongst faculty and staff. As most teachers would share, any amount of time to brainstorm ideas about curriculum, students, and pedagogy is ideal but in reality there is little time for this to happen.
But what if schools did offer FedEx days for teachers and staff? For example, what might occur is creativity, problem solving, team building, and motivation. These autonomous days would allow for collaboration, issues that are important for the teachers to be addressed and voices to be heard. Schools of today need to embrace this type of motivation.
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Glad you enjoyed that presentation. As it happens, several schools have begun FedEx Days.
See here (http://mrspripp.blogspot.com/2011/05/4th-grade-do-...) and here ( http://stumpteacher.blogspot.com/2011/03/innovatio...) for two examples.
Best,
Dan Pink