The effects of motivation on the performance of teachers in Primary Schools in Nairobi : a case of Lang'ata and Embakasi Division

Abstract

Motivation is the term used to describe those processes, both instinctive and rational by which people seek to satisfy the basic drives perceived needs and personal goals, which trigger human behavior. The aspect of motivation in employees in general is really complex. The study was undertaken as a comparative study on the effects of motivation on teachers' performance in private primary and public primary schools in Nairobi's Langata and Embakasi divisions. The choice of the education sector and more so primary schools is deliberate since a great proportion of the country's resources are spent on education programs. The study adopted mostly an exploratory design to obtain primary data. A descriptive study was also conducted with the researcher obtaining secondary data from existing sources in the library, the internet and in journals. The target population of the study was all the schools in Embakasi and Langata divisions. The sample for the study was drawn by stratified random sampling and consisted of a total of 40 schools, 20 of the them private and the other 20 public. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and with the help of the SPSS computer package, the data was presented in charts, tables, line graphs, bar graphs and cross tabulations.