The level of job satisfaction of pre-school teachers in Thika municipality

Abstract

The sample consisted of 57 pre-school teachers; Privately sponsored schools (PS) -22, Church Sponsored (CS) -15, Local Community Schools (LCS)-10, Municipality Schools (MUN)-6, and Non-Governmental Organization Schools (NGO)-4. Quasi-experimental casual comparative research design was used. The independent variables were, school sponsorships and selected demographic variables. The dependent variable was the Pre-school Teacher Job Satisfaction (PTJS) level.

A three-part instrument adopted from teacher job satisfaction studies in Kenya was employed. The most commonly cited satisfier was ''Good management,'' whereas ''Poor salary scale,'' was the most common dissatisfier. The results showed that satisfiers and dissatisfiers as motivators and hygiene factors respectively, were not mutually exclusive.

Job satisfaction factors were scored on a 5-point Likert scale. The factor that scored highest in this section was, ''children are cooperative,''whereas ''the position of pre-school teacher in Kenya, ''scored the lowest. Most of the pre-school teachers in the study were satisfied with their jobs.

To test the hypotheses One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Spearman's rho and symmetric measures (Phi and Crammer's V) were employed accordingly. The hypotheses were tested at an alpha level of 0.05. The results showed that:

i. There were no significant differences between PTJS scores of pre-school teachers by sponsorships, or demographic variables.

ii. There were significant differences in physical factor scores by sponsorships.

Finally, the study came up with recommendations for the government sponsorships, parents and further research.