The coevolutionary dynamics between public school teachers’ public service motivation and the formation of their policy discussion ties during the implementation of basic education reforms in Myanmar

Abstract

The Myanmar government introduced the National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) in late 2015 and has implemented education reforms in the basic education sector since 2016. Public school teachers play a vital role in the implementation of these basic education reforms as street-level bureaucrats. However, little is known about the dynamics between teachers’ public service motivation and their interaction behavior with school colleagues, which are primary factors for the successful implementation of the education reforms to meet the goals of the NESP. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the longitudinal interplay between teachers’ public service motivation and the formation of their discussion ties during the implementation of the NESP by using stochastic actor-oriented modeling with longitudinal network data collected from a public high school. This study provides evidence that teachers discussed reform implementation matters with colleagues who have different levels of public service motivation and, after these discussions, teachers’ levels of public service motivation adjusted to those of their colleagues in their discussion network over time.