Commuting patterns and teachers' disposition to work in public secondary schools in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

The problem of shuttling in densely sophisticated cities such as Lagos is of serious worry to various educational stakeholders. This is also due to the fact that commuting habits bring about the consequential effect on the professionalism as well as the accomplishment of tasks by teachers. As such, the current paper has engaged in analysing the commuting behaviour among teachers, as well as their attitude towards duty in public secondary schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study was meant to achieve three goals, answer two research questions, and test one hypothesis at 0.05 significance level. Utilising a descriptive survey research design, the research involved a total of 5,200 teachers who were sampled in all 78 secondary schools in the public sector. The empirical part of the study utilised a sample size of 300 teachers in 30 random schools. The data collection was performed through a self-administered, validated, reliable and structured questionnaire, titled Commuting Pattern and Teachers' Work Disposition Questionnaire (CPTWDQ) (r=0.96), which consisted of three parts. To answer the research questions, descriptive statistics were utilised, and multiple regression was used to test the hypothesis at the 0.05 level of confidence. The results found that most of the teachers travelled a distance of 21 kilometres or above; their attitude towards work was moderately average; commuting time and method of transport significantly influenced work disposition, whereas commuting distance did not have a significant influence. One of the recommendations called for governments to focus on the improvement of the public transportation systems and road network, especially in the urban and semi-urban areas where the challenge of commuting is most felt. Schools also ought to observe the introduction of flexible work schedules to teachers, particularly those with long commuting distances or to traffic-congested locations, thus eliminating the negative effect of commuting time.