Speaker
Description
The increasing rate of high school teachers' attrition has triggered several studies on the job satisfaction of high school teachers in developed countries. Their findings show that school context, teachers' ages and the environment are the factors that influence the teachers' decision to remain in the school, profession or to leave. However, those results can not be applied in most developing countries due to the significant difference of environment, job availability, and work context. The oversupply of PhD in certain non-industrialized countries like Cameroon means, more PhD holders most take jobs in lower qualification, very often it is high school teaching. We study the job satisfaction amongst Cameroonian high school teachers holding a PhD. In this study, various parameters such as motivation, satisfaction, sense of belonging, financial remuneration, job stability, difficulty to leave the profession, their aspiration to be in tertiary education, relation with supervisors/authorities, social pressure, etc were studied through a questionnaire.The data produced by more than 50 high school teachers holder of a PhD, shows that unlike in developed country, job and salary security coupled with the relative free time in high school were amongst the top factors that motivate the studied group. Many do consider a career change, however, due to low job prospect, they will rather remain in high school. A high level of dissatisfaction was noticed amongst that population, amongst others, they have lost their sense of belonging as more aspired to join the university workforce. A high sense of boredom, low-status perception, low financial remuneration and lack of career perspective were the top motivating factor to leave the high school but not the profession. Despite, the high level of dissatisfaction, many teachers would still consider the profession and the high school, if they were to restart.
