CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Education is largely a matter of a learning process that involves interaction between teacher and learner. When this process works well, real learning takes places. In the past, academic performance was often measure more by ear than today. In most developing countries especially Nigeria, there is a widespread desire to change the educational system to meet the new social and technological needs. In a country like Nigeria, dropout tendencies and teachers’ motivation have posed a lot of repercussions for the educational sector. Significantly, motivation is very essential to the continuing growth of educational systems around the world and they rank alongside professional knowledge and skills, center competencies, educational resources as well as strategies, in genuinely determining educational success and performance. According to Sergiovanni (2014), teachers are motivated when they are able to share a common body of knowledge. This can only happen when teachers have forums for discussions and training and development programmes.

The world “motivation” according to Longman Dictionary is derived from motive, which is an eagerness and willingness to do something without needing to be told or force to it. Similarly, the roles and contexts of educations’ motivational methods and tools cannot be underemphasized because high motivation enhances productivity which is naturally in the interests of all educational systems (Ololube 2010, 2011).

According to Paul Bennell (2012), ‘’Over one-third of all the teachers at the survey primary schools in five of the six extended case study countries indicated that teachers at their school are ‘poorly’ or ‘very poorly’ motivated. Motivation levels appear to be chronically low in Nigeria. Teachers are expected to render a very high job performance, and the Ministry of Education is always curious regarding the job performance of its teachers. Also, the Ministry of Education demands a very high measure of loyalty, patriotism, dedication, hard work and commitment from its teachers (Ubom & Joshua, 2013).

Earlier research done on the subject matter by researchers in Pakistan, Nigeria, and the whole Sub-Saharan Africa as well notable case studies carried in Ghana on Education Management Information Systems, Induction for Teacher Retention, Motivation and Incentives for teachers and Teachers Job Satisfaction and Motivation for school effectiveness have yielded results to support the idea of motivation of teachers if there is to improvements in the performance of the schools.

Therefore, the value of teachers in preparing human beings for a useful living very high and as contained in the national policy on education (2010) that teacher help to “equip“ students to live effectively in modern age of science and technology.This has made the growing complexity in terms of environmental expulsion, resource mobilization and organization of education institutional the increasing societal demand the more result, oriented schools have made the duties of the staff in the schools to be more critical in organization behaviour, there is therefore a corresponding need for more pragmatic motivational design that will enhance the job performance of teachers in the schools.

Teacher motivation in developed countries is due to the fact that teachers are provided with good quality teacher training and development hence they have opportunities to further improve their training (Evans 2014). They work in acceptable physical school contexts. These countries are such as, the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada and Australia. They remain motivated when they see their learners achieve academically as they expect incentives. A decade ago, one observer noted that performance incentives in schools were virtually untested‖ (Hanushek, 2016) Since then, a multitude of accountability programs have been implemented that mete out rewards or sanctions to schools and teachers based on some function of school test scores, especially under the guise of the U.S‘s. No Child Left Behind Act.

There is mounting concern that rigid compensation structures weaken teachers‘incentives hence the need to exert effort and improve student performance. In the United States and elsewhere, such concerns have catalyzed the use of monetary performance incentives, often based upon the level or growth of students‘ test-score performance. Nonetheless, pay-for-performance is relatively rare and existing plans are often small-scale and short-lived. In contrast, Nigeria school teachers have been eligible for large financial awards since 1993 that are based upon student test scores, among other factors.

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