Attracting and Retaining Teachers: A Question of Motivation.

Attracting and retaining competent teachers is a key concern when it comes to managing the supply and demand for teachers. This article examines the motivation that prompts people to enter or leave the teaching profession with the aim of identifying a decision framework for defining teacher policies. The results are based on the teacher workforce planning system put in place by the Education Department of the Swiss Canton of Geneva. Having identified the most influential factors affecting teacher motivation, we rated these with regard to their responsiveness to policy measures in a bid to identify levers for deriving effective teacher policies. This decision framework highlights three main issues to serve as a focus for policy measures-the characteristics of the job activities, working conditions and professional image. Finally, priority policy measures have been derived from motivational inducement systems, which include task, leader ship, reward, professional development and social systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]