CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Teachers touch the lives of all children from a variety of backgrounds, including those from families that exhibit a wide range of cultural and linguistic diversity. Teachers also touch the lives of children with varying ability levels, including those with significant disadvantages, such as poverty, parental and societal neglect, as well as intellectual, social and physical disabilities. Generally, quality teachers are those teachers that students remember and cherish forever. Such teachers have long-lasting impacts on the lives of students. They have good classroom management skills and ensure good student behaviour, effective study and work habit. They also possess the knowledge of the subject matter they teach, they are prepared to answer questions and make lessons interesting for students. Nevertheless, some teachers tend to leave the teaching profession to other jobs or transfer from one school to another, putting those most vulnerable children and youths at risk of failing to realize opportunities afforded to them through quality education. Understanding why teachers leave is the first step in getting them to stay. Most times, teachers leave when they encounter environments that lack essential professional supports. These include: Job dissatisfaction; poor working conditions and low salary; inadequate support from parents, administration, colleagues and the public; discipline, management and attendance problems; increasing class size; increase in workloads; poor motivation of students; and lack of space for teachers to participate in key decisions affecting the school. Another reason is lack of induction and mentoring programmes for new and experienced teachers (Ingersoll and Smith, 2004). The complexity of the issues embedded in retaining high quality teachers, made administrators find addressing these essential issues to be a daunting task. It is therefore paramount to assist administrators in planning, implementing, evaluating a high quality teacher retention initiative that will help keep the best teacher in their schools.

Retention is referred to as the ability of an organization to retain its employees. It could also be considered as relating to the efforts by which employers attempt to retain their workforce.

Quality teachers, as studies have consistently shown, are teachers who are better trained, more experienced and licensed in the subject they teach (Mayer, Mullens and Moore, 2000). Development are planned activities which focus on increasing and enlarging the capacities of employees so that they can successfully handle greater and / or assume higher position in the organisation’s hierarchy to better handle current responsibilities. It has been known by several names including human resource development, learning and development (Harrison, 2005). The art of retaining and developing quality teachers is therefore pivotal to school administrators to the success of secondary schools.

The most important element in an organization is human resources or labour. Employee motivation is the greatest impact that spur the labour to high productivity leading to growth in modern organization. For an organization to successfully motivate its employees, it has to cater for the needs of its staff. In the act of teaching there are two parties, the teachers and the learners who work together in sourcing program designed to modify the learner’s behavior and experiences in some ways. It is necessary to begin with observation about the teacher and his needs.

Maslow, (1954) posited a hierarchy of human needs based on two groupings: deficiency needs and growth needs. Maslow said all human beings take all the needs to organizational settings. Thus, the principal who wishes to elicit the best helping the teachers achieve these needs. These needs are physiological, safety, belonginess and love, esteem and self actualization needs. What is required of a teacher is to be capable of sharing work program with students designed to modify their behavior and experience. This means making relevant experience available to the students at the right time. The teacher can do all these if his needs are met or provided for.

Irowi, (1999) observed that a teacher who is poorly trained or by the virtue of his low job satisfaction due to poor condition of service and other related factors, the result is that the product from such a teacher would be low quality. As a result of inadequate motivation, teachers are demoralized in undertaking their duties.

Although many teachers are dedicated but due to the lack of the training programs to keep them up to date in the new innovation in teaching  methods, it set a limitation to their performance and student achievement. For teachers to be effective they need to be motivated, trained, supplied with the necessary teaching and learning materials. Due to the enormous importance of the teachers in any educational system, there is the need to find how to improve upon the quality of the teachers and areas where improvement is needed to enhance their performance so as to raise the quality of education in schools.

Statement of the Problem

The background had shown that motivation and retention is an aspect of workers life that boost their morals to be more committed and dedicated to work. The role of quality, qualified and effective teachers is invaluable that one may fail to come up with proper expression to express the magnitude of their significance in its exactness. Through classroom interaction with students, teachers work as transmitters of knowledge, values and skills which work as tools for rural and urban transformation. Teachers provide education which works as a solution to poverty alleviation, empowerment, sustainable development and environmental challenges.

Oziambo (2010) asserts that teachers are responsible for high standards in education, transmission of values and norms to students by teaching them or being models. They are at the front line of developing students’ understanding, learning and core values.

From this it is imperative that a study should be carried out from teachers of technical colleges, their present or current views regarding their motivational and retention needs.

Purpose of the Study

This study will identify retention and motivational needs of teachers, especially:

1.                 Determine the motivational needs of teachers?

2.                 Determine the benefit of teacher motivation to students’ learning/students improvement?

3.                 Determine the factors hindering motivation of teachers?

Significance of the Study

When retention and motivational needs of teachers are identified, educational administrators may adopt and integrate such needs in planning adequate programmes and developing and using human potential, the findings of this study could be of help to Ministry of Education to understand their roles and participate effectively in training their teachers.

Teachers will also benefit because their motivational needs will be identified and effectively taken care of. Also the students will benefit because their teachers will be enjoying doing their job as their needs will be identified enabling good teaching environment.

Research Questions

1.     What are the motivational needs of teachers?

2.     What is the benefit of teacher motivation to students’ learning/students improvement?

3.     What are the factors hindering motivation of teachers?

Scope of the Study

This study is limited to the retention and motivational needs of teachers in technical colleges.

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