Inspirational Motivation and Teachers’ Work Performance in Public Junior Schools in Turkana County, Kenya: Evidence from a Convergent Mixed Methods Study

Teachers’ work performance is the proximate determinant of the quality of instruction that learners receive, and it is shaped in large measure by the leadership exercised by the head of institution. Kenya’s junior schools, created by the Competency Based Education reform in 2023, operate under new curricular demands, and in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands such as Turkana County they do so under acute shortages of teachers, materials and infrastructure. Inspirational motivation, the transformational leadership behaviour through which a leader articulates a compelling vision, communicates high expectations and expresses confidence in staff, has rarely been examined against the full range of teachers’ work performance indicators in such a setting. This article, drawn from a larger study of transformational leadership in the county, reports the evidence on one question only: how the head of institution’s inspirational motivation influences teachers’ work performance in public junior schools in Turkana County. The study employed a convergent design in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently, analyzed separately and merged at the interpretation stage. Questionnaires were administered to a stratified random sample of teachers drawn from schools sampled across all 11 sub counties, a structured guide was used to observe one lesson in each participating school, and in-depth interviews were held with heads of institutions, Curriculum Support Officers, Board of Management chairpersons and Sub County Directors of Education. Of those sampled, 261 teachers, 141 heads of institutions, 19 Curriculum Support Officers, 138 Board of Management chairpersons and 10 Sub County Directors of Education took part. Quantitative data were analyzed in SPSS Version 25 using descriptive statistics and multiple regression at the 0.05 level of significance; qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Teachers rated inspirational motivation at a composite mean of 3.42 (SD = 0.87), with 54.4 percent agreement, a moderate level. The strongest behaviours were the provision of a clear vision for the school’s future (mean 3.61, 61.3 percent) and the head’s own performance as a benchmark (mean 3.52, 57.9 percent); the weakest were reassurance during difficult periods (mean 3.24, 46.4 percent) and the perception of the head’s support as a source of inspiration (mean 3.29, 48.7 percent). In the regression model, inspirational motivation exerted a positive and statistically significant influence on teachers’ work performance (B = 0.173, t = 2.98, p = .003), and the first null hypothesis was rejected. The qualitative strand converged with these results and qualified them: heads of institutions described sharing the school vision every term while teachers remained demoralized by delayed hardship allowances, a teacher observed that motivation is hard to sustain where there are no textbooks or even chalk, supervisory officers located the constraint in the county’s staffing establishment and in insecure, unhoused postings, and Board of Management chairpersons pressed for recognition and reward systems alongside infrastructure.The study concludes that inspirational motivation significantly raises teachers’ work performance in these schools, but that its motivational force is conditional on at least minimally adequate welfare and material support. Practically, heads of institutions should sustain vision setting and deliberately strengthen reassurance and encouragement during difficult periods, a behaviour that carries no financial cost, while the employer and the ministry address the welfare and staffing conditions on which the effect of that messaging depends.

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