ABSTRACT
It is believed that teachers in secondary schools no longer manifest expected desirable
attitudes, behaviour and competencies. These poor work attitudes and behaviour are attributed to lack of poor motivation to teaching profession. The purpose of this study was to examine the staff motivation as a tool for effective secondary school administration. In Aguata zone of Anambra State. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey design was used for the study, 400 teachers were selected from a population of 791, and 20 schools from a total of 51 secondary schools distributed in Aguata Education zone in Anambra State. Data were collated using a four point scale, question are of 24 items, comprising of two sections. These have reliability coefficient values of 0.86 and 0.99 respectively. The reliability coefficients were determined using Crombach alpha reliability coefficient technique. Analysis was done using standared deviation and mean scores for answering the research questions and t-test for testing the null hypotheses. Finding revealed that Urban and Rural teachers in secondary schools were aware of the strategies that would enhance the motivation of teachers towards better performance and measures that could be adopted to enhance motivation but do not experience them. Some of these strategies include prompt and regular payment of salaries, opportunities for advancement in the teaching profession, allowances for administrative works, good prospects of promotion in the teaching profession etc. Measures indicated for enhancement of staff motivation communication between teachers and school administrators good working environment, recognition of teachers for the work they do and also paying teachers salaries on regular basis. It was recommended that both state government and school administrators should be alive to the responsibilities of teachers. Urgent attention to these findings and recommendation will likely enhance teacher’s commitment to teaching profession hence improved quality instruction.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
All round development of the child has been the desired goal of education, the issue of high standards and quality in our secondary schools cannot be completed without considering the quality of staff (teachers) since, human resource is considered the most important factor of production.
The staff is a vital component of school administration. He stands at the most important point in educational process. The federal government of Nigeria made it clear in National Policy of Education (FRN, 2004) that the purpose of teacher education should be to produce highly motivated, conscientious, and efficient classroom teachers. The Federal Government of Nigeria has introduced training programs, workshops, seminars that will enhance the motivation of staff. Staff in this context refers to teachers, the oil that lubricates factors of academic performance and educational enterprise as a whole. Teachers as human beings need some level of motivation (material and non-material) to elicit good and expected work behaviour from them. Motivation is therefore the willingness to exert high level of impact on the organizational goals.
Motivation according to Ugwu (2001) is the arousal, direction and persistence of behaviour in achieving the goals of an institution. Therefore, the job of school administration is to get things done through the staff and to do this, the administrator should be able to motivate the staff. Ngwoke (2004) defined motivation as the internal state or mental and psychological set in an individual which compels, energizes, sustains and directs the individual’s activity toward a goal. Motivation therefore involves the
direction of behaviour, the strength of responses and persistence of the behaviour. The term also includes a number of other concepts such as drives, needs, incentive, reward, reinforcement etc.
From the above definitions, it has been observed that formal organization like school cannot achieve effectively the stated objectives without motivating the staff. To ensure the staff’s effective discipline and efficient performance, even the effectiveness of the administrator, the administrator has to motivate subordinate by meeting their needs. Bello (2003) defined motivation as the willingness to exert high levels of effect to reach organizational goals, conditioned by efforts, ability to satisfy some individual need. Motivation is an embracing factor in an employee’s development to accomplish personal as well as organizational goals. Chukwudolue (2002) noted that motivation is concerned with how behaviour is energized, sustained, directed and regulating the activities of an organism in a given context. Thus, behaviour is regulated by stimulus- response associated through reinforcement process. An activated force motivates an individual to achieve a goal.
In most cases, when teachers are motivated, they generally perform well than when they are not. Thus what motivates female teachers may not necessary motivate their male counterpart. Notwithstanding, women have more positive attitude towards teaching than their male colleagues. Obi (2003) stated that, a well motivated and flexible work force can be achieved by a coherent approach to developing strategies in the areas of raising teacher’s salaries without streamlining the payment system.
Motivation may be seen as the perceptions, methods, and experience, teaching and individual activities used by the educational administrators for the purpose of
providing a climate that is conducive to the satisfaction of various needs of the teachers so that they may become satisfied, dedicated and effective task performers. Motivation is important in getting long experienced and short experienced teachers absorbed in the task of teaching as well as empowering them to give high quality output and avoid wastages in terms of dropouts, carryover, and failures.
Motivation is an embracing factor in teacher’s development to accomplish personal as well as school goals. Motivation should be both intrinsic and extrinsic to ensure teacher efficiency and effectiveness. Ogunu (2000) opined that, there are two types of motivation, namely: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation refers to the self generated factors that influence people to behave in a particular direction. These factors include responsibility, freedom to act, scope to use and develop skills and abilities, interesting and challenging work and opportunities for advancement. Extrinsic motivation can be defined as what is done to or for people to motivate them; these include rewards like increased pay, praise or promotion. Extrinsic motivation can have powerful effect but do not last long. But intrinsic motivation concerned with quality of working life, are likely to have a deeper and longer term effect since they are inherent in individuals and not imposed from outside
Much emphasis has been on motivation of staff but it appears as if nothing has been done in that regard because Nigerian teacher’s salaries are not paid regularly. Ezenwafor (2006) observed that, an average Nigerian worker suffers from lack of motivation; the failure of the teacher is the failure of the school, while the effectiveness of teacher is the effectiveness of the school. So the teacher’s welfare should not be taken for granted. This shows that motivation is a reinforcer that could make a teacher enhance
his productivity with or without supervision, cause him to be happy and eager to perform his official tasks effectively irrespective of location. A major reason for the perceived difference in respect between rural and urban areas is that in rural area, it is characterized by isolated areas of an open country with low population density such as a village, or countryside where people live on farms, hamlets and small village, while urban area is a heterogeneous settlement with a high population density and a vast human features that is characterized by predominantly non-agricultural activities and the presence of sizeable modern social infrastructures.(en.wikipedia.org).There is clear evidence that teachers in rural areas and those in urban schools have same view on motivation and the factors responsible for it. Thus, location has no differential effect on rural and urban teachers.
Therefore, motivation is the key to performance improvement. According to Ogbonnaya (2005), education is the bedrock of all developments. As such the importance of education to a nation’s development cannot be overemphasized so also the importance of teachers who are pillars in the stability and sustainability of education. The contemporary teachers keep on complaining of poor conditions of service and lack of status in the society. ‘Poor teacher’ is a very common phrase among many Nigerians; this is no surprising since status is measured in terms of wealth acquired.
This situation made Achimugu (2000) to observe that, teacher’s conditions of service are very poor. For instance, fringe benefit such as medical service allowance for self, wife and children, housing and car loans are still not given to teachers. It is a fact that, without dedicated, motivated and satisfied teachers, there will be no base for support and sustainability of education. The Nigerian societies attach no value to teachers. Most parents do not want their children to join teaching profession because of lack of
motivation for teachers (Achimugu, 2002).According to Ugwu (2006), the leave allowances of 1996-2001 were jumped and that of 2002 were skeletally paid to some schools. Till today teachers are still expecting that of 2003 to date. According to him teachers are no more interested in involving themselves in any industrial actions because of the reluctance of the government in providing for their benefit, as these do not help matter. Rather, most teachers involve themselves in other businesses so as to maintain their families and train their own children when salaries are not forth coming.
In such situations, no one will deliver his lessons, give and mark assignments of the student’s for effective achievement of the goals of secondary education. There are various ways of motivating staff, the educational administrator like the principal according to Ezeocha (1982) ought to foresee and satisfy the staff needs, the staff are then motivated towards good relationships and effectiveness in duties which in turn impinges the effectiveness of the principal for the good of the school. Some of these components of motivating the staff are; financial reward, participation in decision-making, fringe benefits, and promotion. Staff will maximize and optimize their work when these worries are taken care of, invariably through the administration of the principal.
Staff motivation as a tool can be defined as a method of course of action, or an instrument by which an act can be accomplished or an end achieved. It is an instrument used in performance of an operation. (http: www./wikimedia foundation.org/wiki/home).The following motivational strategies which involves workshop training, seminar, sabbatical leaves for research opportunities, national award excellence, fringe benefits, promotion opportunities, sponsorship for in-service courses, professional recognition, should be enriched for vertical growth of teachers. In addition,
effectiveness generally refers to the extent to which an organization realized it’s goals or achieve it’s purpose. It is about doing the right things in the teaching process so that at the end of the teaching, the goals and objectives of the lessons are achieved (Awotua- Efobo, 1999).
The right things in administrative process could only be done if teachers are motivated to attend to their duties regularly. Furthermore, administration according to Peretomode (2003) is the component part of the management concerned with facilitating accomplishment of the objectives of an organization like school, through the systematic management of constraints and careful utilization of available limited resources like human, material and finance.
Administration is the arrangement human and material resources effectively and judiciously in order to maximize the stated objective of the organization.Okeke (1984) sees school administration as involving the provision and maintenance of the necessary manpower to those who teach children with a view to bring about the desired change in children’s behaviour.
The adequate management of these spurs the effective management of the school, in order to achieve the school objectives in particular and educating goals of education in general. The staff motivational strategies currently existing in schools and the ideal motivational measures for school administration are what this work wants to determine. Statement of Problem
Over the years, the performance of school teachers has been dwindling. This has been affecting the academic achievement of secondary school students. Poor performance of teachers have been attributed to a number of factors, which include lack of proper
motivation, low pay, poor condition of service in teaching profession which manifest itself in-poor performance, pre-mature departure from teaching, attracting the least qualified and lack of commitments to the job. Some of the teachers had sought for greener pastures in oil companies, banking and production industries where salaries, fringe benefits and general conditions are far better. Inadequate salary, poor working conditions and lack of societal recognition among others were crucial factors responsible for frustration and eventual decline in professional standard of Nigerian school system.
The implication of all these is that poor motivation of teachers has led to so many other problems within the secondary school administrative system ranging from wide spread and high rate of examination malpractices to poor learning achievement, high rate of teacher’s indiscipline, low teacher’s morale and student’s poor attitude to studies to mention but a few .As such secondary school teachers development and motivation need to be enhanced for better performance and achievement of success in secondary school administration. What then are the existing staff motivational strategies and what motivational measures ought to exist in schools?
Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of the study is to investigate the staff motivation, as a tool for effective secondary school administration in Aguata education Zone of Anambra State. The study seeks to,
a. Identify the existing innovative staff motivational strategies adopted by school administrators in the motivation of teachers towards better performance.
b. Identify the measures that could be adopted to enhance motivation of staff in secondary school administration in Aguata Education Zone sof Anambra State.
Significance of Study
The benefits that shall accrue from this study are many. Specifically, teachers, students, government, and society will all benefit from this study.
Teachers will benefit from this study, when their employers are abreast with the knowledge of these findings of the study, by being more responsible in providing incentives and other benefit which will strengthen their understanding and vision of the organization by contributing effectively.
Students will benefit from the findings of this study because the effectiveness of the teacher will make learning effective on the side of the student. The effectiveness in teaching as a result of motivation will ignite, propel, energize, and arouse the student’s interest towards their academic pursuit. This will bring about success in school and in society in general. Government will be well informed with the understanding that being the employers of labour, they need to provide the necessary things that are needed by employees. Incentives and conditions of service that will motivate the staff to enable them concentrate and work effectively, which will turn out to enhance effective school management for higher productivity. It will also help the government to achieve the objectives of secondary education as stated on national policy of education.
The society will benefit maximally, in that the development, high productivity, and greater output generation will come from students because of the accumulated knowledge inculcated in them. Parents and guardians shall equally benefit from the resources spent on the children in school because it will significantly come back to them at the long-run. Society at large will be deposited with skillful, creative, qualitative,
productive and high technical manpower that will bring about growth in the economy and development in the society.
Scope of the Study
This study will focus on staff motivation as a tool for effective secondary school administration with the aim of determining the existing motivational patterns in secondary school administration. It will also determine the ideal measures that could be adopted to enhance motivation of staff in secondary school administration in Aguata Education Zone of Anambra State.
Research Questions
This following research questions guided the study.
1. What are the existing staff motivational strategies adopted by school administrators in the motivation of teachers towards better performance?
2. What measures could be adopted to enhance motivation of staff in Aguata
Education Zone of Anambra State?
Hypotheses
The following hypotheses were formulated to guide the study.
HO1: There is no significant difference (P<0.05) between the mean responses of urban and rural teachers on the existing staff motivational strategies adopted by school administrators.
HO2: There is no significant difference (P<0.05) between the mean responses of urban and rural teachers on the ideal measures that could be adopted to enhance motivation of staff.
This material content is developed to serve as a GUIDE for students to conduct academic research
STAFF MOTIVATION AS A TOOL FOR EFFECTIVE SECONDARY SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION IN AGUATA EDUCATION ZONE OF ANAMBRA STATE
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