School Boards’ Contributions on Community Secondary School Teachers’ Level of Motivation in Tanzania

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the contribution of school boards on teachers’ levels of motivation in community secondary schools in Moshi District Council, Tanzania. This was pursued under the research questions; which were to investigate the extent to which the school boards perform different teacher motivational strategies, the perceptions of teachers towards how the school boards motivates them, challenges and suggestions on how to improve the contribution of school boards on teachers’ levels of motivation and to determine the ways of overcoming the challenges in order to improve the performance of school boards on teachers’ levels of motivation. The study was guided by Motivation-Hygiene Theory of (1959). The researcher adopted concurrent design under the mixed methods approach which enabled the collection of qualitative and quantitative data at the same time for the purpose of understanding the problem in detail. The study targeted all heads of schools, teachers and board members from community secondary schools in Moshi District Council. Probability and nonprobability sampling techniques were used to select the study sample which consisted of 100 teachers, 10 heads of schools and 10 members of school boards to make a total number of 120 respondents. Questionnaires, document analysis schedule and interview guides were used to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data, frequencies, percentages and means. The hypothesis was tested by using independent sample t-test at 95% confidence level. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The study found out that the school boards do not do most of the practices that would contribute to teachers’ levels of motivation. Also teachers were found to have negative perception towards how the school boards motivate them. Results of hypothesis testing indicated no significant difference in the perception mean scores of male and female teachers whereas all of them felt to be demotivated by the school boards (p-value = 0.421). The findings revealed that lack of funds was pointed out as the main challenge for failure of the school boards to motivate teachers. The study recommended for proper fund raising so as to make the schools to have adequate budget for teachers motivation so as to enable teachers to give out their best.