Career Commitment in Primary Schools in Imenti South District Meru County Kenya.

Abstract

Lack of commitment by teachers to their career is behind much of the behaviour blamed for high costs and poor services. The teachers feel under-paid, and most of them see their peers in other professions to be doing better than them financially. This suggests that a considerable proportion of teachers in Kenyan schools may not be committed to the teaching profession, and may be finding incentives elsewhere. Therefore, they express the desire to quit teaching if opportunities were available. This study was therefore set to investigate the influence of Head teacher’s leadership styles on Primary school teacher’s career commitment in Imenti South District Kenya. The Study investigated how Head teachers leadership styles stimulates and sustains’ teacher’s career commitment. The study was guided by the Transformational leadership style to test whether teachers under the head teacher who exhibits the transformational leadership style have higher levels of career commitment than those working under the Head teacher who did not. The independent variable was head teachers leadership styles. The intervening variable was teachers’ gender, teaching experience and qualification .The dependent variable was teacher’s career commitment. The study used descriptive survey design targeting 109 head teachers and 864 teachers from 109 public primary schools in Imenti South District, Meru County. Stratified random sampling was used to select 20 schools. 20 Head teachers and 40 teachers were selected randomly to participate in the study. Data was collected using two questionnaires, one for head teachers and one for teachers. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data obtained, including frequency accounts and mean percentages. The results of data analysis were presented in summary form using frequency tables, bar graphs and pie charts. It is hoped that the findings of the study will be used to equip administrators with knowledge to influence the retention rate of teachers and make recommendation and measures that can be taken to improve career commitment of teachers.