Teachers’ motivation and work performance in secondary schools : a Case of Ilala Municipal Council in Dar es Salaam

Teacher motivation is very important in schools. When teachers' motivation is high work performance also increases. The purpose of the study was to explore the motivation strategies leading to enhanced teachers work performance in Public Secondary Schools in Tanzania. The objectives involved exploring how heads of public secondary schools motivate their teachers to perform better, investigate how motivation has affected teachers’ performance in public secondary schools and lastly to find out teachers’ attitudes or perception on motivational strategies used in their schools according to their demographic characteristics . This study was guided by three theories: Maslow, Herzberg’s and the equity theory. A descriptive survey design was employed in this study where the dependent variable was teachers’ work performance in secondary schools while the independent variables were teacher motivation, motivation strategies, attitudes and perception. The study was conducted in Ilala district in Dar es Salaam. The population for the study was regional education officer, district education officer, secondary school teachers and head teachers in public secondary schools in Ilala district. Sample size of the respondents was 100 categorized into Regional Education Officer, District Education Officer; heads of schools and teachers. Random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the sample for the study. A questionnaire, interview and FGD were used to collect data from the field. Data were analysed through thematic analysis and SPSS used to analysed emerging Quantitative data. Results from the data analysis revealed that teachers were not satisfied with strategies used to motivate them. Their low salaries affected their performance. Lack of housing, appraisal, promotion, limited chance of education upgrading, unconstructive criticism, all these were among other factors that have highly contributed to job satisfaction and low performance among secondary school teachers. In order to improve secondary teachers' motivation and work performance stakeholders should collaborate to ensure they provide the much needed resources to teachers such as involving them in decision making concerning motivation after an individual has reached to a certain level of performance, increased salary, housing, trainings and provide chance and scholarship for education upgrading