Job satisfaction and motivation amongst secondary school teachers in Saudi Arabia

Many studies of job satisfaction and motivation have been conducted in developed countries, but few in developing ones, including Saudi Arabia, in particular in the field of education. The present study investigates the general job satisfaction and motivation of teachers in boys’ secondary schools in Saudi Arabia, identifies the main contributory factors and explores the relationship between satisfaction and motivation and the effects of demographic variables such as age, qualifications, experience, length of service and training. In the quantitative phase, 737 teachers in 24 schools in Riyadh completed a self-administered questionnaire, then qualitative data were gathered by means of semi-structured interviews with 32 teachers. Factor analysis of the quantitative data, using SPSS, identified the following ten factors affecting job satisfaction: staff development; student progress; salary and promotion; supervision and status in society; educational system; marking pupils’ work; workload; nature of the work; administration; and interpersonal relationships. Factor analysis also identified two main factors with regard to motivation, labelled ‘intrinsic and altruistic’ and ‘extrinsic’. The interview data indicated that religion was a third motivating factor. The findings show that teachers were generally satisfied with their jobs and that interpersonal relationships made the greatest contribution to their satisfaction, followed by school administration and the nature of the work. Satisfaction was moderately influenced by marking pupils’ work, the educational system, supervision and social status, workload and conditions, salary and promotion, and student progress, whereas staff development contributed to teachers’ dissatisfaction. The participating teachers were generally highly motivated, more so by the intrinsic/altruistic factor than the extrinsic and religious ones. The study also found a significant relationship between teachers’ general job satisfaction and their general motivation. There were two other significant correlations: a relatively strong one between satisfaction and extrinsic motivation, and a less strong one between satisfaction and intrinsic/altruistic motivation. With regard to demographic variables, there were statistically significant differences in job satisfaction and motivation between teachers based on their qualifications, experience and subjects taught, whereas age, job grade, length of teaching experience at the present school, the number of lessons taught and having received in-service training were not associated with statistically significant differences between teachers in terms of either job satisfaction or motivation.