There is a whole teacher management literature based around the premise that teachers need to be pushed to change. Since I’m well past being a new teacher, this passage about mid-career teachers by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan leapt out at me:
“We focus on the first three years to get teachers going. And then we focus on the people who may sometimes prove difficult at the end. We think we can leave the people in the middle alone. If we leave them alone, though, there’s the danger that things become too easy, that they won’t stretch themselves. And then we’re headed for a worrying end, and instead of quiet ones or disenchanted ones or especially renewed ones, we find ourselves dealing with reprobates — and we created them. We need to focus more on the teachers in the middle and to keep challenging and stretching them.”