Encouraging Feedback Motivates an Aging Teacher

Author(s):

Päivikki Lahtinen

Conference:

ECER 2010

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 05,

Paper Session

Time:

2010-08-26

08:30-10:00

Room:

U40 SALI 7, Metsätalo

Chair:

Klaus Kasper Kofod

Contribution

This qualitative study looks at the conceptions that aging health care sector teachers and their immediate superiors have about the aging of teachers and its relationship to e.g. the teachers’ professional competence, professional growth, aging management and work. In this study, the term aging refers to a person aged 45 and over. In the center of the theoretical frame of reference are the observation of aging teachers from the viewpoint of work and leadership, transformational leadership and the observation of the professional growth and competence of an aging worker. In the focus of the leadership, the study deals with transformational leadership in the educational system. A transformational leader motivates the employees to develop and he or she is very important in supporting the staff in their empowering process. The universities of applied sciences in Finland have to develop all the time and they have been constantly changing; thus, transformational leadership is a suitable approach for their purposes.

The leader may have enough knowledge about aging and his/her own attitudes to aging have to be the starting point for the leadership of aging workers. The aging worker has a high professional self-esteem, he/she is contented with work and he/she has a strong will to continually learn something new. There are many aging teachers in the universities of applied sciences who will retire in the next few years. Therefore, we need measures to help the aging teachers stay at work as long as possible. The study aims to answer the following questions: what kinds of conceptions the interviewees have about leadership and its relationship to the competence and empowerment of teachers, and what kinds of conceptions the interviewees have about leadership and its relationship to the professional growth and work of teachers. In this study, the aging teachers’ and their immediate superiors’ different kinds of subjective conceptions of the topics have been analysed and categorized.

Method

The empirical data were obtained through nineteen (19) qualitative interviews which were done in four separate universities of applied sciences. The interviews of the teachers and one interview of an immediate superior, which was a pre-interview for all the others, were conducted in October and December 2003 and in March 2004. The remaining interviews of the immediate superiors were conducted during autumn 2004. The interviewees received the themes of the interviews beforehand, and the interviews were recorded on tape. The research approach in this study is phenomenography. The interviews were written down and the written material was read through several times. The next step was to export the qualitative data to the Atlas.-ti program. This process included the coding of the data. After this coding and a comparison between similarities and dissimilarities were formulated sub-categories, generic categories and main categories.

Expected Outcomes

The significance of encouraging feedback is especially high, as well as the competence of the teacher and the appreciation of the experience gained over the working years. Encouraging feedback motivates the aging teacher to develop his/her work and it can increase the commitment to the work. The elements that describe the empowering leadership of aging teachers are, for instance, taking care of their endurance and promoting well-being at work. Based on the aging teachers’ conceptions, the establishment of the universities of applied sciences has had positive influence on their willingness to educate themselves as it has brought new challenges and positive changes in their learning environments. The competence of the aging teachers is described as a strength and the experience gained over the years was found as a resource in the work community. The study also indicates, for instance, the importance of securing the continuity of the competence. In other words, the study shows how the teachers, who are about to retire, place significance on securing their experience and know-how, i.e. tacit knowledge. This is one of the most important challenges in work communities.

References

Avolio, B.J., Bass, B.M. & Jung, D. 1999. Reexamining the components of transformational and transactional leadership using the multifactor leadership questionnaire. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 7, 441 - 462. Bass, B.M. & Avolio, B.J. 1994. Introduction. In book B.M. Bass & B.J. Avolio (eds.) Improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership. International educational and professional publisher. London – New Delhi - Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1 - 9. Jacoby, L.L; Bishara, A.J.; Hessels, S. & Toth, J.P. 2005. Aging, subjective experience, and cognitive control: dramatic false remembering by older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology 134 (2), 131 - 148. Marton, F. 1988b. Phenomenography: exploring different conceptions of reality. In D. M. Fetterman (eds.) Qualititative approaches to evaluation in education. The silent scientific revolution. New York: Praeger Publishers, 176 - 205. Mäntylä, R. 2007. Ammatillinen kasvu ammattikorkeakoulussa. In S. Saari & T. Varis (eds.) Ammatillinen kasvu. Professional growth. Anniversary book of Pekka Ruohotie. Keuruu: Otavan Kirjapaino Oy, 92 - 102.

Author Information

Päivikki Lahtinen

Lahti University of Applied Sciences

Social and Health Care

Lahti

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