Factors that motivate teachers in profit-making schools

Abstract

This study aims at obtaining a deeper and clearer understanding of various factors that motivate teacher to work in profit-making schools. Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene theory on motivation is adopted as the main theoretical basis. A questionnaire survey was used to gather data from English teachers in a profit-making school. Of the 95 returned questionnaires, 87 were found valid for statistic analysis which was processed by SPSS 17.0. The major findings were summarized as follows. First, the most important factor is Job Security while the least important one is Responsibility. Second, it is found that hygiene factors are more important than motivators to motivate teachers in this case school, which is not so consistent with Herzberg’s theory. Third, the results of the study also challenged the Maslow’s theory. Maslow’s statement that lower level needs must be satisfied before the desire of the next high level is not confirmed by this study. Fourth, when concerned with the relationship between teachers’ background and the motivation factors, this study showed that teachers with different gender, age, working experience, academic background and marital status have different perceptions of the importance of the factors. Further study could be follow-up to extend this study to other employees, such as middle management in schools. Since this study only answer the question “what” motivate teachers, “how” those factors affect teachers to work is another area.