Role of School Leadership in Motivating Teachers: A Case of Ilala Municipality, Dar es Salaam

The study was conducted to explore the views of teachers on effective strategies that heads of schools can use to motivate teachers; teacher personal factors leading to motivation; and school level factors leading to teacher motivation. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data from 120 teachers from 20 schools in Ilala district. The results of the findings have revealed that the most effective strategies for the heads of schools to use were; provision of teaching and learning materials and resources, involving teachers in decision making, awarding of token prizes to teachers who produced better results than other teachers, while personal factors leading to motivation among the teachers were interpersonal relationships (collegiality), sense of belonging, ability and interest in teaching and level of education. Further, the study found that school based factors leading to teacher motivation included conducive environment (good working condition), parents’ involvement in school issues and learners’ discipline. However, in the course of this study, there were some external factors that interfered with the school based strategies to motivate teachers, these included; delays of salaries, lack of incentives such as allowances and in some schools, work conditions were not quite favorable. This study recommends that heads of schools should ensure the improvement of school environment as well as bolstering teachers’ capability to develop teaching and learning materials. The study suggests that the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training should ensure timely remuneration of teachers and devise a way to generate income that can be used to pay allowances for the teachers who work beyond the allocated time