ECD CHALLENGES IN UGANDA
Motivating teachers by providing them with necessary facilities like instructional materials in classroom, accommodation facilities and paying teachers good and timely salary lead to better performance among learners in ECD (Sooter, 2013). Nakasongola district is one of the poorest performing districts in Uganda and the ability of children to enroll from ECD to primary school is very poor. More to that almost 40% of leaners in ECD Nakasongola district have poor performance in ECD (Wentzel, 2017). The poor performance in Nakasongola district ECD schools has thus puzzled the district officials as to whether low motivation of teachers is the reason for poor performance.
While there has been many studies conducted to establish the causes of poor performance in ECD in Uganda Masaazi, Ssentanda, & Ngaka, (2018). There is still little information on the influence of ECD teachers’ intrinsic motivation on the academic performance of children. Different studies have tried to relate teacher motivation and academic performance (BlackWalker, Fernald, Andersen, DiGirolamo, & Devercelli, 2017), however none of them clearly identifies the relationship between availability of ECD teaching resources and academic performance of children. In order to ensure that there is better academic performance extrinsic motivation of the teachers has to be taken care of by the stake holders. However few studies like that of Mertala, (2019), have tried to examine the effects of ECD teachers’ extrinsic motivation on the academic performance of children. This finding however falls short of examining the influence of ECD teacher motivation on academic performance of children in early childhood development.
