Unveiling teachers’ work preferences: A conjoint experiment on the implications of school governance reform across three countries

Abstract

School governance reforms have changed teachers’ work in many aspects and have been associated with increasing teachers’ discontent and demotivation. Research on which school policies and organizational practices teachers prefer is scarce and faces challenges. Our conjoint experiment identifies the importance given by teachers to different work dimensions altered by recent reforms and teachers’ preferences regarding school policies in three contexts. Internationally-shared preferences include qualitative teaching assessments, socially mixed classes, clear goal-setting, and collective rewards. Context-specific preferences include individual incentives in Chile, a low-pay, high-stakes accountability system, and peer support in Norway and Catalonia, which are systems with collaborative governance traditions.