Some academic institutions present ‘warden award’ on every 5th of Sept, though deceptively announced as the best teacher award. I know an example, where the stark correlation of best teacher also being the hostel warden will break the binomial test to smithers. The criteria for the award are non-existent and are likely influenced by a few people’s opinion. It’s not about individuals accepting the self-pleasing orgasms, the idea of this award is outdated, childish, and is based on fallacious presumptions. The popularly cited motivation behind this award is to boost morale of the youngsters for teaching (the fundamental job that they are anyway supposed to do). Chutzpah! A well-deserved award can be the one for an extra significant mile above one’s responsibility, not the routine job you are being paid for. An award motivates one, but has power to demotivate the group. The award can demotivate the intrinsically motivated individuals due to continued ignorance and insensitivity. Awards of this form spread the emotions of inequality and unfairness in a group. An informal praise in a peer-to-peer environment should work better than ceremonial awards. And, ofcourse, like others this award can also be gamed by learning the past patterns and logistics: be a hostel warden, get adopted by deans, and give good marks to all students etc. Is this the motivation the administrators look for? To create crackheads out of teachers? To make it worse, the award has age limit: an expiry date after which you should not be the best teacher. After this age limit, the rationale of motivating the employee is disposable. I would argue that the people on later side of age need more of such motivation, otherwise what explains the outsourcing of their teaching job to the post-docs and the junior faculty?
In the end, why the teaching is being considered as individualistic job, while theres is involvement of several individuals in many of the courses. Moreover, you can't be good at teaching unless some taught your students the prerequisites. The team nature of teaching is least appreciated and in fact being discouraged by recognizing individuals.
Are these stubborn and uneducated ideas really inescapable?
(Interesting reads in the context:
https://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-dirty-laundry-of-employee-award-programs-evidence-from-the-field)
In the end, why the teaching is being considered as individualistic job, while theres is involvement of several individuals in many of the courses. Moreover, you can't be good at teaching unless some taught your students the prerequisites. The team nature of teaching is least appreciated and in fact being discouraged by recognizing individuals.
Are these stubborn and uneducated ideas really inescapable?
(Interesting reads in the context:
https://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-dirty-laundry-of-employee-award-programs-evidence-from-the-field)
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