Relationship between Staff Motivation Practices of Principals and Teachers’ Job Commitment in Public Secondary Schools in Anambra State

Abstract

The study adopted a correlational research design. The study was conducted in Anambra State. The population for the study comprised 12,080 teachers in the 266 public secondary schools in Anambra State. The sample for this study consisted of 1,208 teachers drawn from the population of the study. The sample comprised 10% of the entire population, drawn using proportionate stratified sampling technique. A researchers-developed questionnaires titled ‘‘Staff Motivation Practices Questionnaire (SMPQ)’’ and “Teachers Job Commitment Questionnaire (TJCQ) were used for data collection. Both SMPQ and TJCQ were responded to by teachers. The instruments were subjected to face validation by three experts. The data used for computing the reliability indices were obtained from the 50 copies of both questionnaires administered on a sample of 50 teachers in Enugu state. Cronbach alpha was used to compute the collected data. The co-efficient value for SMPQ was 0.88 while for TJCQ was 0.83. The researchers with the help of five research assistants who are secondary school teachers in Anambra state adopted a direct approach for data collection. Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to answer the research questions. The findings of the study shows that there is a low positive relationship between principals’ staff motivation practices and teachers’ job commitment in public secondary Schools in Anambra State. Also, there is no significant relationship between principals’ staff motivation practices and teachers’ job commitment in public secondary schools in Anambra State. It was recommended that in order to create a working environment that encourages teachers to maintain longer tenure especially in private secondary schools, there is need to review existing pay practices, so as to offer fair pay that will not only result in retention of highly skilled and experienced teachers, but also prove useful in the motivation of competent teachers.