Teacher absenteeism is a problem that needs a solution. It is imperative that teachers come to work each day to prepare their students for academic achievement. If teachers are chronically absent from work, the students’ academic achievement suffers. There needs to be a way to minimize teacher absences. School districts must track data that shows teacher absences in order to get a clear picture of when and where the absences are the greatest problem. A review of the literature identified several studies conducted over the years that document the effects of teacher absenteeism. With this in mind, it is recommended that incentives be put in place to reduce the absences of the teachers. I furthered the research to include data from a school district by researching teacher perceptions of the use of teacher attendance incentives in the school district. The purpose of this study was to determine which schools within the school district have Incentive programs in place to motivate teachers to come to work. Existing attendance data was obtained to analyze the attendance of the teachers at each building. The teachers were then surveyed to identify the incentives that are in place at each building and the teachers’ perceptions of those incentives. The surveys conducted also assisted in determining if the attendance incentives that are used as motivation are effective to motivate teachers to attend work. The results of the teachers’ perceptions of the incentive program at each school will be compared with the teacher attendance data to determine which teacher attendance incentives are effective in motivating teachers to attend work as scheduled. The incentives that are the most effective will be shared with each principal in the district to utilize in maintaining better teacher attendance throughout the school district.

The purpose of the present investigation was to assess the relationships among the contingency of teachers' reactions as perceived by the pupils, the pupils' academic performance, and internality. One might expect that children who perceive their teacher as contingently rewarding and punishing would achieve higher grades and test scores than those who view their teachers' reactions as unrelated to their behavior. It is believed that children's perceptions of the contingencies of their teacher's responses may be more highly related to achievement behavior than the teacher's actual distribution of rewards and punishments. Perceived contingency of punishments and rewards may be important determiners of achievement. The perception of punishments as noncontingent is likely to be negatively related to achievement; however, the same may not be true of noncontingent reward. Indiscriminate dispersion of rewards could have a motivating effect or, as one might infer from Paris & Cairns (1972), no effect at all. Internality and achievement are expected to be positively related, perhaps more so for boys than for girls, as the trend of previous evidence suggests. Because of conflicting reports, no firm expectation can be formulated with regard to sex differences and the effectiveness of IAR+ versus IAR- scores.

The diploma thesis deals with the perception of teacher's authority at elementary school. The theoretical part introduces essential terms which are connected with this topic. For example the term authority and its changes of perception in the course of time, alternative schools and the different point of view on authority, the connection between the position of authority and discipline in class, the role of reward and punishment. In the practical part is used qualitative method. The research is based on interviews with teachers. The aim of this thesis is to obtain information related to teacher's authority. Collected data are evaluated in the seventh chapter.