GOVERNMENT SUPPORT SERVICES, PROFESSIONALISM, JOB SECURITY AND TEACHER TASK PERFORMANCE IN OYO STATE PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS, NIGERIA

Abstract

Teacher Task Performance (TTP) entails quality teaching, classroom management, subject mastery, lesson preparation and job commitment, which should be exhibited by school teachers for effective service delivery. However, reports have shown that the task performance of public secondary school teachers in Oyo State is on the decline. Previous studies on TTP largely focused on teacher workload, job satisfaction, leadership style, school factors with little attention paid to Government Support Services (GSS), Teacher Professionalism (TP) and Job Security (JS). This study, therefore, was carried out to investigate GSS (Welfare Services - WS, Career Advancement Programmes - CAP and Motivational Strategies - MS); TP (Compliance With Code of Ethics - CWCoE, Teacher Qualification - TQ and Teacher Job Autonomy - TJA) and JS (Job Technological Change - JTC, Job Characteristics - JC and Economic Conditions - EC) on TTP in Oyo State public secondary schools, Nigeria. The study was anchored to Campbell’s Theory of Performance, while the survey design of correlational type was adopted. The multi-stage sampling procedure was used. The simple random sampling technique was used to select four out of six Education Zones (EZs) in the State. Simple random sampling was employed to select 11 out of 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs) from the EZs, and 78 out of 257 existing secondary schools. The proportional to size technique was used to select 1,189 (20%) teachers from the EZs, while the principals were totally enumerated. The instruments used were TTP (α = 0.84); WS (α = 0.84); MS (α = 0.90); CAP (α = 0.89); CWCoE (α = 0.73); TJA (α = 0.84); JTC (α = 0.89); JC (α = 0.86) and EC (α = 0.76) scales. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product moment correlation and Multiple regression at 0.05 level of significance. Participants’ age was 45.5±3.20 years, while majority (61.0%) were females. The TTP ((x ) ̅= 1.49), WS (x ̅ = 1.38), CAP (x ̅ = 1.32), MS (x ̅ = 1.08), CWCoE (x ̅ = 1.32), TJA (x ̅ = 1.40), JTC (x ̅ = 1.48), JC (x ̅ = 1.44) and EC (x ̅ = 1.40) were low against the threshold of 2.0. The TQ profiles of respondents were, NCE (19.6%); B.Sc.(Ed.)/B.A.(Ed.)/B.Ed. (71.6%) and M.Ed (8.8%). The WS (r = 0.11), MS (r = 0.15), CAP (r = 0.15), CWCoE (r = 0.07), TJA (r = 0.26), JTC (r = 0.13) and JC (r = 0.10) had significant relationships with TTP, while TQ and EC did not. The independent variables had a significant joint contribution to TTP (F(9;1150) =11.40, Adj.R2 = 0.08), accounting for 8.0% of its variance. The TJA (β = 0.24), MS (β = 0.091), JC (β = 0.072), JTC (β = 0.046), CAP (β = 0.021) and CWCoE (β = 0.019) made significant relative contributions to TTP, while TQ, WS and EC did not. Government support services, teacher professionalism and job security influenced the task performance of public secondary school teachers in Oyo State, Nigeria. These factors should be given proper attention by education stakeholders for improved teacher task performance.