Job crafting is the process of individuals redefining and adjusting their job in personally meaningful ways to improve their work experience. In this multiple case study, we explore how a group of kindergarten teachers conducted job crafting and examine its potential outcomes. Based on criterion sampling and purposeful selection, we recruit 28…

Purpose: How leaders' empowerment impacts followers' job performance in learning organizations seeks much attention. Under the lens of self-determination theory, this research examines the mediating role of work-related curiosity between empowering leadership and job-crafting behaviors. Furthermore, by applying trait activation theory, this study…

This paper examines how teachers and administrators who were involved in a multi-year effort to engage in distributed leadership interpreted their experiences. We lay out and apply an argument for using an interpretive perspective to study distributed leadership. Collective sensemaking around distributed leadership is illustrated by an in-depth…

A discussion of the importance of faculty renewal and positive attitudes toward teaching suggests five ways to keep energy and excitement in teaching, including focusing more on students, allowing students more responsibility, using varied teaching methods, taking on teaching challenges, and planning periodic activities away from the classroom.…

A career ladder affecting the work structure and career opportunities of teachers was studied to determine effects on teacher attitudes. Responses of 389 elementary through high school teachers to career ladder work efforts, work of schools, peer supervision, and career growth opportunities and stability were affected by the design. (TJH)

Following a brief discussion of the "occupational diseases" of teaching are some questions which teachers can ask themselves to help define for themselves how they might use the teaching process to enrich themselves as people. (KC)

To discover how school restructuring affects teachers' work and teacher engagement, a study was conducted on eight schools that have been experimenting with alternative structures, programs, and activities for 7 to 10 years, The data presented were collected in two of the schools through observations of 15 classes and interviews with teachers,…

Utah's involvement with career ladders grew out of the nationwide educational reform movement. The plan was to improve learning by improving the quality of teachers. This could be done by retaining superior teachers, attracting higher quality recruits, and improving teachers' working conditions. In 1984 the Utah Legislature focused on…

This paper reports on the results of a survey on inservice teacher education. Three primary groups were surveyed: teachers, professors, and parents of school children. There was unanimous agreement between the three groups that there is not enough inservice currently provided to teachers. However, there was wide variation of opinion on what the…

This volume, the first of two reports on development of teacher incentive structures, focuses on implementation of a career ladder design and teacher evaluation experiment in four Utah school districts. The report has five sections. Section 1 describes study background and implementation of an evaluation-reward system that featured data collection…

A study examined untenured faculty at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) to determine their job satisfaction and work stress, changes in these areas over time, and ways the university could enrich their job experience. Two cohorts were studied via questionnaires. The first cohort comprised first-year faculty (N=23) and the second comprised…

This paper compares work patterns emerging from the first year of implementation of a job enlargement career ladder for teachers at two junior high schools. Field research and interview data are used to analyze implementation process variables, work structures, and career concepts. The study investigated problems educators consider important in…

A study was undertaken in 1980 of employment attitudes among faculty at the General College of the University of Minnesota, an institution for nontraditional postsecondary education. The long form of the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire was used, with a new demographic questionnaire substituted. The survey sample consisted of 96 teaching,…

Based on intensive case studies of two school districts, this study compared two teacher work reforms: merit pay and job enlargement. Interviews with 64 teachers and 53 administrators, supplemented by over 1,300 survey responses, indicate the efficacy of each approach and the potential advantages of job enlargement. (SLD)

This volume, the second of two reports on development of teacher incentive structures, presents case studies of a career ladder design and teacher evaluation experiment in four Utah school districts. Case studies examined relationships among career ladder features, process variables, and career ladder effectiveness, which is defined in terms of…