Social Factors Affecting Teachers

2.5.1 Factors Affecting Teachers’ Morale

The result of different study conducted provided many factors affecting teachers’ morale Mgalla (2011) grouped these factors into three factors financial factors, institutional factors and social factors.

Financial factors

These include lack of motivation, low salaries and inadequate supply of teaching materials with committed spending their own money to buy classroom materials for their student (Joseph, 2009). Insufficient teaching materials such as, appropriate books for all subjects in public secondary school has been a major challenge facing teachers in Tanzania. Also libraries, insufficiency desk lead most of the students to sit on the floor. Lack of science laboratories has been one of the major

Stress also affects morale it can result into emotional and physical exhaustion and a reduction in work, motivation, involvement, and satisfaction. Others are inadequate support from school heads, peers, subject advisors, parents and community. These factors create negative attitudes among teachers who might end up leaving teaching profession for other jobs (Massenga, 2009).

Furthermore, teachers’ morale indifferent part of the world has been observed to be low even when government has been trying to show more concern for the teaching profession. In Australia for example teachers’ morale is at all the time low with teacher feeling undervalued, unappreciated and demoralized due to lack of leadership (Kelly, 2000). Other researchers confirm that the issue of teacher morale is not restricted to any one country but is a global issue that bears many similarities. Liu and Meyer (2005) mention student discipline as one of the factors leading to low teacher’s morale and salary as the other second factor. Wentworth (1990) explained the following as the most important factors affecting teachers’

His study findings concluded that there is no single best leadership style in terms of motivating teachers. Therefore, he suggested that research continue utilizing a different instrument and sampling of different levels of education such as elementary, middle or high school. Mumbe (1993) investigated the head of school leadership style and job satisfaction of teachers in primary secondary school in Busia, Sub-district of Uganda. The researcher concluded that the democratic style affected teachers’ job satisfaction positively and motivated them to work harder towards the achievement of school objectives. The autocratic leadership style found to have a negative impact on the teacher job satisfaction and the laissez faire leadership style did not affect the teachers’ job satisfaction.

Egley and Jones (2005) focused on the relationships between behavior of elementary school principals and teachers job satisfaction, school climate and school accountability rating in Florida. They found that when principals treated their staff members more like equals and invited them into leadership roles, teacher morale overall improved. A principal who invites leadership in this way tends to focus on “compassion and respect for the individual through collaboration and mutual respect” (Egley & Jones,