JOB SATISFACTION AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Job satisfaction is not a new phenomenon at all in organizational science and organizational behaviour. It is one of the topics that have drawn interests among scholars in the field. Many studies have been done on this particular topic for over six decades now and thousands of articles have been published (Zembylas & Papanastasiou, 2006). However, most of the studies have been done in the developed counties such as United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand but a few studies have been undertaken in the developing countries (ibid). This implies that there is more literature on teachers‟ job satisfaction from the developed countries than there is from developing countries and Nigeria in particular. Attempts to improve performance in schools will never succeed if teachers‟ job satisfaction is ignored. If employees in an organization are motivated, they will render services to the employer and customers very efficiently and effectively (Mbua, 2003). This implies that motivated and satisfied secondary school teachers are most likely to affect the students‟ learning positively while the opposite of that may have negative impacts on students‟ performance. Educational leaders and administrators/managers have to pay special attention to the phenomena of motivation and job satisfaction. Nigeria like other countries in the world is currently working towards improving the quality of its education so that it suits the future needs of the society and the demands of globalization (Nguni, 2005). The government of Nigeria has succeeded to make primary education universal through the implementation of the Primary Education Development Plan (hereafter PEDP) 2002 to 2006 and now it is implementing the Secondary Education Development Plan (hereafter SEDP) 2005 to 2009 that is meant to increase the accessibility of secondary education to its citizens (Oluochi, 2006). The two programmes are geared towards implementing and attaining the Millennium Development Goals (hereafter MDGs) on education as per Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All (hereafter EFA) by 2015 (UNESCO, 2005). The implementation of the two programmes will be meaningless if Nigeria does not consider providing quality education as it is spelt out in the country‟s Education Policy (MOEC, 1995). The efforts to provide quality education will prove futile if all stakeholders and policy makers now and in the future do not pay attention to teachers‟ job satisfaction. Zembylas and Papanastasious (2006, 245), who studied teacher job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in Cyprus suggest, “...there is an urgent need for policy makers to recognise the fact that educational quality is largely related to teacher job satisfaction.” This implies that teachers‟ job satisfaction is a pivotal aspect for a country like Nigeria which is trying to fight ignorance among its citizens both quantitatively and qualitatively.