The need of evaluating teachers‘ work started to become increasingly stressed out both in Italy and Slovenia, with the aim to determine, who are those theachers that give effort in their work, that are succesful in what they do and therefore they are meritorious for rewards, pay rises and promotions in their job. We could link this tendency to the racionality of meritocracy which is one of the leading racionalities of today’s society. In its basis its main request is that every person should be rewarded regarding their abilities and the effort that he or she puts in his or her work. The rationality of meritocracy will be the main theme of this work. In the theoretical part its main concepts and critcs are presented as well as the meritocratic and nonmeritocratic elements who play an important role on giving (or taking away) the possibility of ascending the social ledder; the main meritocratic features of the racionality of meritocracy in the school and work systems are also highlited. The analysis of the Slovenian and Italian laws from the field of employement, salaries, rewarding and advancement, their comparison, their critics and advantages follow stright. The theoretical part ends with the presentation of theories in the field of social justice that show the right way of upgrading the concept of meritocracy.
In the empirical part we used the qualitative analysis on 14 interviews (8 of them were individual, while 6 were group interviews). With this analysis I present the opinions of teachers, school headmasters and representatives of trade unions from Italy and Slovenia about employement, rewarding and advancement of teachers, which have their basis on the racionality of meritocracy. The results are presented by different contents – the categories that were achieved with the qualitative analysis. These are: the criteria of employement of candidates for teaching work places, the regulations of rewarding and advancement systems, opinions about the rewarding and advancement systems, opinions about the pay system, opinions about the teaching profession, the meritorious teacher, meritocratic, nonmeritocratic elements and opinions about the evaluation system with suggestions for its amendment.
The research, based on the opinions of those who participated, proved that both meritocratic and nonmeritocratic elements (social capital and luck) have an impact in the employement process of teachers in both countries. Also in the Italian rewarding system and Slovenian advancement system respondents noted the lack of equal opportunities for teachers to get the reward or get an advancement in their pay. In the Slovenian rewarding and advancement system was mentioned the role of nonmeritocratic elements such as social capital and luck. The opinions about which teachers merit more than average teachers were very similar in both countries and between the different groups of interviewees. The majority of interviewees agreed on being dissatisfied with the rewarding system, advancement system and teachers’s salaries. Yet he opinions were more divided regarding the recognition of the positive and negative consequences of the rewarding and advancement systems on the motivation for better work quality and on the collaboration between teachers.
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