Work Design



Work Design.

Primary school teacher

The relevance of job satisfaction and motivation are very crucial to the long-term growth of any educational system around the world. They probably rank alongside professional knowledge and skills, center competencies, educational resources and strategies as the veritable determinants of educational success and performance. Professional knowledge, skills and center competencies occur when one feels effective in one's behavior. In other words, professional knowledge, skills and competencies can be seen when one is taking on and mastering challenging tasks directed at educational success and performance (Filak & Sheldon, 2003).

The above factors are closely similar to efficacy, and, of course, it is well known that many teachers lose or fail to develop self-efficacy within educational settings (Dweck, 1999). In addition, needs satisfaction and motivation to work are very essential in the lives of teachers because they form the fundamental reason for working in life. While almost every teacher works in order to satisfy his or her needs in life, he or she constantly agitates for need satisfaction. Job satisfaction in this context is the ability of the teaching job to meet teachers' needs and improve their job/teaching performance. The teachers' argument is in line with Adams' (1963) equity theory of motivation. Adams' Equity Theory calls for a fair balance to be struck between employees' inputs (e.g., hard work, skill levels, tolerance, and enthusiasm) and employees' outputs (e.g., salary, benefits, and intangibles such as recognition).

According to the theory's finding, a fair balance serves to ensure a strong and productive relationship with the employees, with the overall result being satisfied, thus motivated employees. The theory is built-on the belief that employees become demotivated, both in relation to their job and their employer, if they feel as though their inputs are greater than the outputs. Employees can be expected to respond to this is different ways, including de-motivation (generally to the extent the employee perceives the disparity between the inputs and the outputs exist), reduced effort, becoming disgruntled, or, in more extreme cases, perhaps even disruptive. 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, 2004). 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 2004, 2005). Herzberg et al., (1959) pointed out that the opposite of dissatisfaction is not satisfaction but no dissatisfaction. Both hygiene factors and motivators are important but in different ways (Naylor 1999: 542). Applying these concepts to education for example, if school improvement depends, fundamentally, on the improvement of teaching, ways to increase teacher motivation and capabilities should be the core processes upon which efforts to make schools more effective focus. In addition, highly motivated and need satisfied teachers can create a good ...