ERIC Number: ED030367
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1968
Pages: 20
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Internal, External and Central Incentives of College Teaching.
Zimmermann, Robert R.
Certain needs are perceived as a set of motivational systems that are necessary for satisfactory adjustment to the teaching profession. The college professor is described as an individual who is low on economic motivation, is not survival oriented, and has high ethical standards and a strong need to communicate facts and ideas to others. In terms of college teaching as a motivated behavior, the professor is not stimulated by internal systems of basic biological drives and their derived drives for money and material gains. Competence appears to be an important motivational source. However, in the model described, the primary motivational system for entering and remaining in college teaching is called the central incentive system, which is powerful in initiation and maintaining qualities, has little to do with survival, and is compatible to other motivational systems. Man can respond to this system by enjoying pleasure for pleasure's sake. In the case of a college professor, pleasure is derived from the maintenance and perpetration of scholarly, intellectual, and unproductive ideas. It is only within an academic community that this form of pleasure may be maintained. Students in their junior year who evince a motivation toward curiosity and the manipulation of ideas should be challenged with a central incentive. The ensuing interaction of the competence incentive system and the central incentive system will increase the quantity and quality of students entering the profession of college professor. (WM)
Descriptors: Cognitive Ability, College Faculty, Incentives, Motivation, Need Gratification, Student Development, Teaching, Values
Publication Type: N/A
Education Level: N/A
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Language: N/A
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Montana Univ., Missoula.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, California, 1968