The need to attract and retain more talented individuals in teaching has become a central issue in educational reform in recent years. A number of state legislatures and school boards developed in the 1980s teacher incentive plans (merit pay or variants like career ladders) that attempted to achieve these key objectives. A growing number of state legislatures and school boards has taken the position that merit pay is a cost-effective method of motivating teachers and excellence in teaching. / Debates about the efficacy of merit pay programs according to instrumental rationality of recruiting and retaining quality teachers, however, have tended to obscure the symbolic importance of these programs. Merit pay programs have expressive facets that have gone largely unrecognized but which should occupy at least as significant a role in judging the effects and the power of such policies on improving educational quality. / This study views merit pay programs as a political ritual in order to explore what expressive symbols these programs dramatize, and what that may mean for public education. The merit pay programs contained in the Florida Educational Reform Act of 1983 and its subsequent amendments are examined as a political ritual in order to illustrate the expressive functions of merit pay programs. The study interprets the meanings and the deeper messages embodied in the Florida teacher incentive programs from both a neo-Durkheimian (functionalist), as well as critical (conflict) theoretical perspectives. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-02, Section: A, page: 0496. / Major Professor: Sande Milton. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78416 |
| Contributors | Arthur, G. F. Kojo., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 276 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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