DEDICATION
6.6 CONCLUSION
7.1.5 Teachers on satisfaction or dissatisfaction
Kadesh: Maybe because of lack of support, a teacher may not want to go to a particular class because s/he knows that if I go to that class I'm not going to get any co-operation from the learners. Sometimes the learners are arrogant. I report them to the principal, the principal does nothing. I feel demotivated (KT 25).
Mercy: Yeah, dissatisfaction, again can also be caused by the type of learners that we teach. They are disrespectful - they are unruly. You give them the homework and they don't do it...so our work is not satisfying (MT 23).
Kadesh: That leads to job dissatisfaction because you do your best (KT 26).
Grace: And you get nothing out of it...They even reported me to the principal that I'm calling them names...because I was so irritated (GT 31).
Mercy: Those are the signs of job dissatisfaction (MT 27).
Kadesh: You end up saying hurtful words to these learners. They are not interested. You know with the ANA exams, some of them will tell you that "I just don't care about this ANA exam, I'm just going to write anything that I like"; and then the Department officials will come to your school and say that you must account for the results, then as teachers how can we account for that, because the learners said that they don't care about those exams...That's another form of job dissatisfaction (KT 27).
Kadesh: Job satisfaction, like getting praised for the work that you are doing and when the kids that you are teaching are passing well because some of the kids do put an effort. This leads to job satisfaction because it will motivate you to do even more. If you have learners that are serious with their work, if you have learners that are serious with their academic development, it leads to job satisfaction (KT 28).
Kadesh: Job satisfaction can also include the praise from the HoD or school principal. If they see that you are a dedicated, hard-working and you are a professional in your work and they commend you for it, it leads to job satisfaction because you would see that at least someone sees my effort and appreciates what I'm doing (KT 30).
Noah: You see, part of the cause of job dissatisfaction comes from that...people come to the teaching profession, they join this union of ours (name of Union withheld) and within two years they are promoted - HoD this year, the following year they become deputy principal, maybe only for six months; another bulletin comes and the same person applies and becomes principal (NT 27).
Kadesh: My colleague here earlier told me that she obtained her Masters degree from Stellenbosch University but she is a level-one teacher. Is that fair? Is that fair? (KT 31)
Mercy: If you are not active in our union, that's what happens (MT 28).
Grace: No, I'm not a unionist - I'm an educator. People make that mistake. They think they are unionists first before they are teachers.
That's the problem (GT 34).
Mercy: So, you won't get anything (laughing) (MT 29).
Kadesh: Unions add to this dissatisfaction. I have made peace that I will remain a post level 1 teacher (KT 33).
Kadesh: In terms of satisfaction, it enables you to work much harder, it enables you to achieve things that are not easily achievable if there is job satisfaction, because if you are satisfied with something, you think positively about it and you can achieve a lot of things. If you have a vision and say ok I would like to achieve this, it can happen with job satisfaction (KT 34).
Mercy: But if you are dissatisfied, like our colleague said, you don't do your best. You only do for the sake of doing it. You don't perform to the best of your ability (MT 32).
This extract showed a jointly constructed position on dissatisfaction. The participants had a ‘collective voice’ on the cause for dissatisfaction among teachers. This ‘collective voice’ was also evident in the instances where some participants completed each other’s conversation to emphasise their agreement to the point being made. While the dominant discourse appeared to be about how teachers were dissatisfied with certain aspects of their practice, Kadesh also presented a different view of being satisfied with some aspects of his work. Because his view of satisfaction was in conflict with the dominant view of dissatisfaction, his view was not fully commented on by the other participants. In fact, when Kadesh initially introduced the rhetoric of satisfaction, Noah redirected the discussion back to dissatisfaction without making any reference to Kadesh’s comment.
In the second instance when Kadesh again talked about how being satisfied influenced his work, Mercy interjected and made emphasis on the point made earlier on about how dissatisfaction influence the teachers’ performance of their work.
In the above extract, Kadesh, Mercy and Grace all talked around the term of dissatisfaction and how it constructed their individual identities. Lack of support was positioned as a central sign around which other signs such as learners, principal, Department of Education are organised. The rhetoric ascribed to individuals (teachers) a frustrated identity in which they were discouraged and disinterested in performing their work because of the arrogance (KT25) and unruliness of learners (MT23) which resulted
in the naming and shaming21 of learners (GT31). The non-supportive principals (KT25) and unreasonable demands (KT27) from the Department of Education equally contributed to the frustration. This frustrated identity evoked negative emotions in teachers.
The silence about the aspects of teachers’ work that brought satisfaction to the teachers was evident when Kadesh’s articulations (KT28/30/34) were not responded to by any of the other participants. This silence was a typical case of exclusion, whereby an alternative discourse is seen as posing threat to what seems to be a dominant discourse.
Teacher unionism, particularly interference of some teacher unions with the promotional processes of teachers (NT27), was introduced by Noah as another dimension of teacher dissatisfaction. Seemingly, the level of teacher activism within the union was one of the deciding factors as to whether the teacher got appointed (MT28/29) for a promotional post or not. From the above extract, a demotivated or discouraged teacher who had minimal chances of upward mobility was being portrayed. When teachers are demotivated, they are likely not to fully engage with their work, and this disengagement may lead to low performance of teachers in their work or even low learner achievement.
Inherent in this union activism was the rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion where, according to some participants, only a select few individuals got into the circle of being promoted into managerial positions.