PERFORMANCE CONTRACTING AS A STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING TEACHERS’ EFFECTIVENESS: OPINION OF STAKEHOLDERS IN ABIA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

In an effort to explore possible ways of improving teacher professional practice in Nigerian schools, this study sought to determine the opinion of teachers and parents of students on a proposal to introduce performance contracting in the Nigerian school system. Performance contracting is synonymous with pay-for-performance, performance-based-pay, merit-pay, and differentiated pay. The study was guided by 3 research questions and 2 hypotheses. 300 teachers and 300 parents purposively selected from literate ones, constituted the subjects for the study. The instrument for data collection was a 10 -item questionnaire constructed by the researcher and validated by competent and teachers’ lectures. The questionnaire requested respondents to indicate their preference for any of the 10 suggested compensation options they would want to be introduced into the Nigeria schools system. The reliability of the instrument was 0.95 using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. In addition to the questionnaire 2, free-response questions were posed to the respondents to determine their news on the pay-for-performance proposal and the reasons for views. Data were collected from the teachers and parents, and analyzed using means and standard deviations for the research questions and Z-test for the hypotheses. Results showed that all the teachers disagreed with the proposal to introduce all the 10 options while all parents wanted all the ten to be introduced. The results further showed that the more and less experienced teachers did not differ in their negative opinion about the proposal. Respondents expressed their opinions freely. Recommendations were made accordingly. Article visualizations: