article · African Quarterly Social Science Review
An investigation into secondary school teachers in Bungoma County, Kenya, evaluated whether everyday professional experiences influence overall job satisfaction. Based on Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene Theory, the study surveyed 376 teachers alongside qualitative interviews. Participants reported high agreement that routine activities, including lesson planning, student engagement, and counselling, supported their teaching effectiveness. However, regression analysis revealed that these daily life experiences had no statistically significant effect on overall job satisfaction. While daily duties shape the ongoing routines of educators, they do not inherently drive their satisfaction at work. Consequently, the findings suggest that educational stakeholders must focus on broader institutional factors, including administrative support, professional recognition, and clear pathways for career advancement, rather than assuming that managing daily tasks alone will sustain teacher morale and enhance student outcomes.
Understanding what drives teacher satisfaction is vital for improving staff retention and student academic achievement. This work demonstrates that routine classroom duties alone do not foster job contentment. Instead, education authorities and policymakers must build stronger institutional backing, structured career development, and formal recognition programmes to properly support educator well-being.
The abstract does not indicate a direct commercial application pathway, as it represents early-stage social research. However, education authorities, school administrators, and human resource managers can use the evidence to inform the design of teacher retention programmes, career advancement frameworks, and institutional support systems.
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This paper has explored how experiences in everyday life affect job satisfaction in secondary schools teachers in Bungoma County Kenya. The objective of the study was to establish the extent to which the regular professional experiences of teachers had any meaningful impact on the degree of job satisfaction. Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene Theory guided the findings of the study. The research design used was quantitative survey with qualitative information through interviews. A sample size of 400 questionnaires was distributed among the secondary school teachers with 376 questionnaires being returned successfully, that is, the response rate of 94% from a target of 2000 teachers drawn from stratified sampling. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and the relationship between daily life experience and job satisfaction was tested using regression analysis; the results showed that the general mean of the daily life experience was 4.00 (SD = 1.00). There was a great deal of agreement between teachers about how everyday experiences like student engagement and lesson planning and counseling helped their teaching to be effective. Nonetheless, regression analysis showed that the daily life experiences did not statistically affect job satisfaction (b = -0.017, t = -1.638, p = 0.102). This implies that as much as daily activities of the teacher influence the routine of teachers, it is not always the case that these activities influence the overall job satisfaction. The research was done on secondary school teachers in Bungoma County only and therefore, it may have lesser generalizability in other places or level of education. The study concluded that, teacher satisfaction should be promoted through the strengthening of institutional support systems like administrative support, professional recognition, and career advancement opportunities carried out by the educational stakeholders. The working conditions and professional well-being of teachers can be improved to achieve higher educational achievement and student performance. The study recommends that the research adds to the existing knowledge about teacher job satisfaction because it establishes that routine professional experiences alone do not have significant impacts on job satisfaction highlighting the role of other institutional and motivational elements.
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DOI: 10.51867/aqssr.3.3.36
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