Teacher Job Satisfaction
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Teaching has existed from ages, it is one of the oldest human activities or occupation. Teachers job is very demanding and have to deal with a number of difficult tasks and workload in order to achieve educational goals. Teaching is the process of attednding to student’s needs,experience, feelings and making specific intervention to help them learn particular things. Teaching as an act of guiding and imparting knowledge in the classroom and this can only be done by trained and qualified teachers. Teaching task is so challenging that it surpasses just holding chalk, standing before the students and giving out different kinds of instructions. It is an application of intellectual technique and it is the only hope that can bring about overall national progress and development to every citizen of Nigeria through a qualified teacher. Alutu (2005) opined that a teacher is a pace setter, a model, facilitator, motivator, stimulator of creativity and an authority who often is very knowledgable in his/her subject area. Other qualities are being a curricular organizer, a surrogate parent and a builder of nation.
A teacher in the professional sense of the word is someone who attempts to help some to acquire skills, attitude, ideas and knowledge that would create or influence desirable changes in the behaviours of the learners. He is the hub around which the entire education system revolves. Nwagwu, quoting Butts in Amaele and Amaele (2003) affirms that man believes that education has power to set him free but everywhere he is in chain for want of good teacher. Teachers take up teaching job to earn a living so that they can meet their personal and family needs. Teachers spend approximately eight hours (8) at work every working day with their students. They also spend a considerable amount of working time outside the instructional days for preparation and assessment. It is generally believed that teaching job afford teachers enough time to their personal and family obligations. This erroneous belief that teaching job is not over-loaded is immediately discarded when the intending teacher actually enters into the profession. The teacher soon realizes that the job of a teacher entail more than just classroom teaching, but also lesson note preparation, marking assignment, setting of test and examination questions and students follow up. All these are necessary organizational tasks that are expected to impact on teacher’s job satisfaction.
Teacher job satisfaction refers to the overall attitude and views of teachers toward their working conditions and profession (Hongying, 2008). It denotes the extent to which teachers are happy with their jobs and the different aspects thereof. The definitions given above suggest that the job satisfaction of secondary school teachers includes the overall feeling they may have about their work when they evaluate their job and their job-related experiences or work factors. Work factors include salary and benefits, management, work characteristics, and interpersonal relationships. Job satisfaction is a worker’s sense of achievement and success on the job. It is generally perceived to be directly linked to productivity as well as to personal well-being. Job satisfaction implies doing a job one enjoys, doing it well and being rewarded for one’s efforts. Nwadiani (2007) observed that teacher’s motivation is low compaired to individauls working in order field
Job satisfaction among school teachers has been considered a vital factor for the improvement of the education system. It’s one of the key factors that reduces education standard in Nigeria. Schools will not be able to realize its goals fully until teachers are sufficiently motivated. There has been an increasing interest to improve the quality of working life of teachers so that they will be more satisfied with their job and motivated to put in their best towards effective and efficient teaching-learning process.
Vanbaren (2010) defines motivation as the process used to encourage and inspire workers to perform their jobs thoroughly and well. Olagide (2000) stated that motivation is goal directed and therefore, cannot be outside the goals of any organization whether public, private and non-profit. Motivation is a factor which closely affects the performance of work and the overall efficiency of an organization. Every employer wishes to hire a positively motivated teachers so as to attain their goals and produce good citizens. Motivation is one of the several factors that contribute to job performance and helps the management to sustain the behaviour of its employee in a particular committed direction.
One of the most important keys to motivation in organizational behaviour is the matrix of fair policy. In an organization where each person has a chance to succeed, a safe place to work, and feels respected by peers and superior, it may be easier to maintain a high level of motivation creating and enforcing strong ethics or policies that can help ensure that motivation is not deterred. Lack of motivation such as poor salary structure, poor teaching-learning environment and lack of insructionals material may result in a teacher’s poor preparation for lesson and subsequently, feel an impulse to skip his/her lessons. While a teacher who enjoy his/her job and feel fairly treated when highly motivated, would be excited to go to work each day and even look forward to work. The extent to which teachers are motivated is expected to have a positive effect on quality performance. Employees who are characterized by a high level of motivation/remuneration, show a higher work interest and life is therefore valuable for the employee. Wages and salaries play a significant role in teacher job satisfaction. These are expected to motivate the teacher to perform maximally and become more productive when their wages and salaries are paid. However, the productivity of a teacher may also depend on teacher workload.