TeacherEducators’JobEnlargementandEnrichment.docVIP

Teacher Educators’ Job Enlargement and Enrichment through Research at Academic Colleges of Education in Israel Eva Katz, MBA, Lecturer Beit Berl College of Education, Israel Email: eva_katz@.beitberl.ac.il Dr. Marianne Coleman, Senior Lecturer University of Leicester, England Email: msc9@le.ac.uk Job enlargement and job enrichment are approaches to motivation suggesting that jobs can be enhanced by making them more appealing to people. Job enlargement is the practice of expanding the content of a job to include more variety and a greater number of tasks at the same level (Greenberg and Baron, 1997, p. 163). Job enrichment or ‘vertical job loading’ is where individuals can gain more responsibility, autonomy and control over the tasks they perform (Riches, 1994, p.240). Job enrichment gives employees a high degree of control over their work, from planning and organizing, through implementing and evaluating the results. It is based on Herzberg’s (1959) studies indicating that the most effective way to motivate workers is by focusing on higher order needs. In this paper an attempt will be made to explore how teacher educators’ jobs can be enlarged and enriched through involvement in research activity. As workers have become more educated, more affluent and more independent, they began reaching for organizations with a better quality of work life (QWL). QWL seeks to employ the higher skills of workers and to provide an environment that encourages them to improve their skills. The idea is that human resources should be developed and not simply used (Newstrom and Davis, 1997, p. 294). The difference between job enlargement and enrichment is summarized in Figure 1: Figure 1. Difference between job enrichment and enlargement (Adopted from Newstrom and Davis, 1997, p. 295) A Job Characteristics Approach Hackman and Oldham (1980) developed the job characteristics model, which specifies five core dimensions that can help people feel that they are d