Teachers Job Satisfaction and Motivation for School Effectiveness: An Assessment.

Significantly, job satisfaction and motivation are very essential to the continuing growth of educational systems around the world and they rank alongside professional knowledge and skills, center competencies, educational resources as well as strategies, in genuinely determining educational success and performance. This study assessed the differences and relationship between the level of teachers’ job satisfaction, motivation and their teaching performance in Rivers State of Nigeria. A questionnaire titled ‘TEJOSAMOQ’ was used to collect data for the study. While the data for the study was analyzed using multiple statistical procedures: mean point value, standard deviation, and variance, t-test of significance and One-way-analysis of variance (ANOVA). The survey results revealed that teacher related sources of job satisfaction seem to have a greater impact on teaching performance, as teachers are also dissatisfied with the educational policies and administration, pay and fringe benefits, material rewards and advancement. Background to the Study The relevance of job satisfaction and motivation are very crucial to the long-term growth of any educational system around the world. They probably rank alongside professional knowledge and skills, center competencies, educational resources and strategies as the veritable determinants of educational success and performance. Professional knowledge, skills and center competencies occur when one feels effective in one’s behavior. In other words, professional knowledge, skills and competencies can be seen when one is taking on and mastering challenging tasks directed at educational success and performance (Filak & Sheldon, 2003). The above factors are closely similar to efficacy, and, of course, it is well known that many teachers lose or fail to develop self-efficacy within educational settings (Dweck, 1999). In addition, needs satisfaction and motivation to work are very essential in the lives of teachers because they form the fundamental reason for working in life. While almost every teacher works in order to satisfy his or her needs in life, he or she constantly agitates for need satisfaction. Job satisfaction in this context is the ability of the teaching job to meet teachers’ needs and improve their job/teaching performance. However, it is assumed that teachers’ agitations and demands are beyond the resources of the Ministry of Education or the government. As a result, the government in Nigeria and the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) are in a constant stand-off over the increase in salaries, benefits, and improvements in working conditions of teachers. The federal and state governments have argued that the present economic realities in the country cannot sustain the demanded increase in salaries, benefits, and improvements in working conditions. Specifically they argue that teachers’ demands are beyond the government resources. Another problem is the government’s position concerning the job performance of the teachers; they accuse the teachers of negligence, laziness, purposeful lethargy, and lack of dedication and zeal to work. They further argue that teachers’ level of efficiency and effectiveness does not necessitate the constant request for salary increase, incentives and better working conditions. While teachers on their part argue that the existing salary structure, benefits and working conditions do not satisfy their basic needs in as much as other sectors of the economy have bigger salary structure, better motivation and enhanced working conditions. They feel Nigeria’s economy is not properly balanced, hence, their demands. The teachers’ argument is in line with Adams’ (1963) equity theory of motivation. Adams’ Equity Theory calls for a fair balance to be struck between employees’ inputs (e.g., hard work, skill levels, tolerance, and enthusiasm) and employees’ outputs (e.g., salary, benefits, and intangibles such as recognition). According to the theory’s finding, a fair balance serves to ensure a strong and productive relationship with the employees, with the overall result being satisfied, thus motivated employees. The theory is built-on the belief that employees become demotivated, both in relation to their job and their employer, if they feel as though their inputs are greater than the outputs. Employees can be expected to respond to this is different ways, including de-motivation (generally to the extent the employee perceives the disparity between the inputs and the outputs exist), reduced effort, becoming disgruntled, or, in more extreme cases, perhaps even disruptive (http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_96.htm) Teachers are expected to render a very high job performance, and the Ministry of Education is always curious regarding the job performance of its teachers. Also, the Ministry of Education demands a very high measure of loyalty, patriotism, dedication, hard work and commitment from its teachers (Ubom & Joshua, 2004). Similarly, the roles and contexts of educations’ motivational methods and tools cannot be underemphasized because high motivation enhances productivity which is naturally in the interests of all educational systems (Ololube 2004, 2005). The overall purpose of the study was to explore and explain job satisfaction and teachers’ work motivation in relation to Nigerian teachers’ needs satisfaction for school effectiveness. The primary purpose of the present research was to test these ideas in the education environment, using teachers’ job and need satisfaction ratings as the dependent variables and teachers’ background information as the independent variables. To a large extent, this work is built on the theoretical frameworks of scholars like Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (1959) and Maslow (1943, 1970). The research hypotheses and objectives of this research were made to order for the study of Nigerian teachers’ job satisfaction, with the view of ascertaining the degree to which intrinsic and extrinsic factors of motivation impact them in their work situation. The relevance and intrigue of this research may be seen in how far it supports or refutes prior claims about job satisfaction and motivation amongst Nigerian teachers and, if possible, teachers around the world. Prominently, Nigerian teachers referred to in this study are secondary school teachers. In addition, the job and needs satisfactions of the Nigerian teachers were compared with the findings from similar studies both within and outside the field of education. For example, Adams (1963), Denga (1996), Filak and Sheldon (2003), Hoppock (1993), MaKenna (2000), Michaelowa (2002), Reis et al. (2000), Robbins (1998), Roe (1970), Sheldon et al. (2001), Sheldon, Ryan, and Reis (1996), Ubom (2001), Ubom and Joshua (2004), Vroom (1964), and Whawo (1993) were consulted in order to establish the extent of variability or association that may exist across their findings. Finally, the empirical findings from this study would help in describing or explaining the pivotal role of motivation on the needs satisfaction of Nigerian teachers’ in line with other theories that are reviewed in this work. However, the emphasis of this research is on the need-based or content theories, with a glance at process and reinforcement theories. The questionnaire developed and used to gather data for this study borrows from similar works on motivation and need satisfaction by authors like Maslow (1943, 1970), Herzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (1959), Ifinedo (2003) and many others. In particular, this research paper is written for education planners, policy makers, educators, academics and human resource development and strategic managers interested in empirical information methods to conceptualise the issue raised in this study and provide them with useful suggestions that might help them improve secondary schooling in Nigeria. Multiple audiences exist for any text, thus it is my intention that the academic community will also find this paper a useful addition to school effectiveness and school improvement literature. Theoretical Perspectives and Literature Review Employee job satisfaction and motivation can be studied through several broad approaches vis-à-vis content or need based theories, process theories and reinforcement theories. However, the term employee motivation is a complex and difficult term to define; therefore a precise definition of this concept is elusive as the notion comprises the characteristics of individual and situation as well as the perception of that situation by the individual (Ifinedo 2003; Rosenfeld & Wilson 1999). An organization’s liveliness, whether public or private, comes from the motivation of its employees, although their abilities play just as crucial a role in determining their work performance their motivation (Lewis, Goodman & Fandt 1995). Golembiewski (1973, p. 597) refers to motivation as the degree of readiness of an organization to pursue some designated goal and implies the determination of the nature and locus of the forces inducing the degree of readiness. To Kelly (1974, p. 279), motivation has to do with the forces that maintain and alter the direction, quality and intensity of behavior. According to Hoy and Miskel (1987, p. 176), employee motivation is the complex forces, drives, needs, tension states, or other mechanisms that start and maintain voluntary activity directed towards the achievement of personal goals. In short, Dessler (2001) defined motivation as the intensity of a person’s desire to engage in some activity. From the above definitions some issues are brought to mind that deal with what starts and energizes human behavior, how those forces are directed and sustained as well as the outcomes they bring about (performance). It follows therefore that there is a relationship between motivation and job satisfaction, which is paramount in any organization’s existence. However, the concepts of motivation and job satisfaction are often confu