CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The relationship between the organization and its members is influenced by what motivates them to work and the rewards and fulfillment they derive from it (Mullins, 2005). The manager needs to know how best to elicit the co-operation of staff and direct their performance to achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. The study therefore sought to examine the influence of motivation on job performance of business educators in senior secondary schools of Delta State.
Motivation and performance are very important factors in terms of organization success and achievement. Motivation plays an important role in the organization because it increases the productivity of employees and the goals can be achieved in an efficient way. The behavior of employees can be changed through motivation in any organization.
From situation to situation, the level of motivation differs within an individual (Robbins, Judge and Sanghi, 2005). Motivation also takes part in an important role for teachers because it helps to achieve the target in an efficient way. If in schools, the teachers do not have sufficient motivation, then they are less competent, which directly influence the students and the education system.
Quality education has a direct being on national prestige, greatness, and cohesion. The knowledge and skill that young people acquire, help determine their degree of patriotism and contribution to national integration and progress.
The performance of senior secondary schools in Sapele Local Government Area of Delta State has taken a downward trend for decade now. The government has however put measures in place through the Ministry of Education to help improve the performances of schools but not much has been achieved on the parts of teachers as a motivating factor to boost their performance.
Low level of performance among the teaching staff may be due to poor motivation and monetary compensation, lacks of training and promotion opportunities, lack of resources or logistics, and the general dissatisfaction with their job. It is against this background that the government removed teachers from civil service salary structure and included twenty seven point five percent (27.5%) inducement incentive package for teachers in primary and secondary schools all over the Federation of Nigeria including Delta State.
School institutions remain a preparatory ground for human development. The teacher is faced with the challenges of educating, socializing, empowering and certifying students, but with the help of good teaching atmosphere (Fafunwa, 2004). By implication, the tasks of a teacher, which include sustaining education system, do not rest on his or her professional competency alone, but on entire features of the school climate (Loukas, 2007).
But a productive school climate needs a good teaching and learning strategies, sufficient instructional materials, richer classroom ecology, pleasant school culture, objective administration and good school physical structures.
Thus, the absence of these can make students in secondary schools to be poorly socialized, uneducated, wrongly informed, half trained, and become unskilled individuals (Carpenters, 2011).
Secondary school is a transitional stage of education (FGN, 2004). This is a forecasting period of youth ability (examining talents) to be specialized as science, social science, art, or commercial students depending on the students’ abilities.
The primary purpose of this, is to prepare individual student to have a strong education (university, polytechnic, college of education), with the simple focus of subject tracking for the purpose of having and producing experts or specialists in subject areas. The success of this is seen as the central duty of the teacher in school (Fafunwa, 2004).
