Age and Job Satisfaction among Public Secondary School Teachers in Nakuru County, Kenya

Abstract

Teacher job satisfaction has in the recent past raised concerns among researchers and practitioners in Kenya. This concern has been occasioned by industrial disharmony in the teaching profession by way of teachers' strikes including dissatisfaction related behaviours among teachers such as absenteeism and desertion of duty. This is what informed the study whose core objective was to investigate the level of job satisfaction among secondary school teachers in Nakuru County-Kenya and the extent to which age differences existed in job satisfaction among the teachers. Data were collected through a self-delivered questionnaire from 341 teachers who were randomly selected from 3,092 teachers in the county. The instrument was validated through a pilot study while its internal and external reliability was estimated through Cronbach's alpha (r= .945) and split-half (r= .905) techniques. Collected data was analyzed usingANOVA statistic. The study revealed that job satisfaction increased with teachers' age and that the age-job satisfaction gap was statistically significant (p=.000). The findings also demonstrated that the significant job satisfaction differences were between teachers below 30 years of age and their 30 years and above counterparts. Drawing on these findings, it is imperative for the national teacher management entity, specifically the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to borrow a leaf from the recommendations of this study with a view to enhancing job satisfaction among the newly recruited teachers. Similarly, secondary schools Boards of Management (BoMs) need to implement these recommendations in their schools so as to improve job satisfaction among newly posted teachers in their schools. This will undoubtedly enhance their performance to the benefit of the students.