Guided by a synthesis of theory on human motivation and evidence about teachers’motivation to implement school reform, this study aimed to better understand the responses of teachers and school administrators to government accountability initiatives and to assess the extent to which leadership practices had a bearing on those responses. Interview data from 48 teachers and 15 administrators in five secondary schools provided evidence for the study. Results help explain the largely negative motivations to implement government accountability policies and indicate differences in such motivation between teachers and school-level administrators. These results also imply that some forms of school leadership may serve as antidotes to negative teacher motivations when such motivations are caused by shortsighted and abrasive government implementation strategies.
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