Improving teaching performance is most likely an act that leads to substantial gains in student learning, essential to know the strengths of teachers and those aspects of their practice which could be further developed. The objective of this research is to find out the effect of incentive, leadership, and work motivation on teacher performance. Research findings showed a direct effect of incentive reward on teacher performance, which reached the value of 0.350, whereas the indirect effect of incentive on teacher performance through work motivation was at the value of 0.155. The direct effect of school principal leadership on teacher performance was at the value of 0.156, whereas the indirect effect of school principal leadership on performance through work motivation was 0.094. The direct effect of work motivation on performance reached the value of 0.378.

The purpose of the presented research was to find out which external and internal considerations and life experience motivate students for acquiring university education for the teaching profession to major in preschool teaching. Data collection was based on the method of unstructured interview on a given theme. Evaluation was based on coding. The presented factors are external factors of the “people” category. Every category is divided into sub-categories and the subcategories are further subdivided to subgroups on the basis of the nature of the incentive. Young people were mainly affected in their decision-making by their mother, her professional and private behaviour, by positive stimuli from their grandmothers, aunts and children. Fathers were not mentioned as actors in making this kind of decision. The most frequently mentioned human factor was represented by female teachers on different levels of education and from different school types. The discouraging factors included schoolmates. Children and schoolmates were newly identified considerations.