Job Satisfaction and Performance of Elementary School Teachers in Southern Papua, Indonesia

The high level of elementary school teacher absenteeism in Papua in general and in Southern Papua in particular has greatly impacted on teachers’ performance in educating students. In this point, the elementary school students’ inability in mastering basic reading, writing, and arithmetic (3-Rs) should be attributed to the low performance of elementary school teachers of Southern Papua, both inside and outside the classroom. As the researchers have widely identified the job satisfaction as one of the most predicting factors for the job performance, this study seeks to examine the job satisfaction and its eventual effects on job performance of teachers in elementary schools of Southern Papua. A survey approach was used to attain this goal. To collect the data, two types of Indonesian language version of questionnaire were distributed to a total of 1062 informants. In order that all the questionnaire were completely filled up and returned in 100% response rate by the informants, we employed a face-to-face method by asking the consent of each informant to fill-up the questionnaire and returned it directly to our team. Applying the simple linear regression analysis as a tool for analyzing data, the result showed that the coefficient value of R is .089 and the ρ value is .000. It inferred that 8.9 % of the job performance of elementary school teachers within the area of Southern Papua, Indonesia, is significantly positively predicted by their personal satisfaction. Though the predicting value of the job satisfaction on the performance of teachers was categorized low (8.9 %), finding of this study may be imperative for the school principals to enhance teachers’ job performance in the elementary schools of Southern Papua by promoting their job satisfaction. Finding of this study may supposedly enlarge the existing knowledge on the job satisfaction and performance of teachers by providing an empirical proof from the Southern Papua context.


Introduction
In modern competitive environment, the role of teachers in educating the youth of nation is understated. Teachers' performance inside and outside the classroom is of crucial for the personal and academic growth of students. "Teachers set the tone of their classroom, build a warm environment, mentor and nurture students, become role models, and listen and look for signs of trouble" [1,1]. In this point of view, the success or the failure of educational activities is highly depending on teacher performance both inside and outside the classroom [2].
This study focuses on the effort of describing the performance of elementary school teachers of Southern Papua and how it is predicted by their job satisfaction. Performance is of high importance for the organization and the worker alike [3]. Organizations always demand greatly performing worker to attain their goal, to provide goods and services they specialized in and, in turn, to achieve competitive advantage [4]. Job performance refers to the act of completing a given job. Despite of no universal definition of job performance, the authors seem to agree that when conceptualizing performance one has to differentiate between an action or behavioral facet and an outcome facet of performance [4,5]. Sonentag and Freze [4,5] further gave a brief explanation on these two facets of performance as follows: "The behavioral facet refers to what an employee does in the job situation. It comprises behaviors such as assembling parts of an aircraft engine, advertising personal products, or training writing skills to senior high school students. […] The outcome facet refers to the outcome of the employee's behavior. The above expressed behaviors may result in outcomes such as numbers of engines assembled, promotion figure, or students writing proficiency." These two facets of performance cannot be separated because, in a workplace, the behavioral assignation and the estimated outcomes, in a workplace, are correlated to each other [5]. In the same vein, Sonnentag and Freze [4,5] argued that "in practice, it might be difficult to describe the action or behavioral aspect of performance without any reference to the outcome aspect". Though the authors did not completely agree about which of these two aspects should be labelled 'performance', Campbell [6] affirmed that performance in a work is rigorous and a distinct body from the results of a specific work which connect to organizational achievement and productivity. Sonnentag and Freze [4,6] seemed to be in line with Campbell [6] when they speak about performance.
Borman and Motowidlo (as cited in [7]) classified performance into the following two aspects, namely task performance and contextual performance. Though these two aspects are complementary to one another, they are different. Borman and Motowidlo (as cited in [7]) described the difference of these two aspects as follows: (a) activities relevant to task performance vary between jobs, while contextual performance activities are relatively similar across jobs; (b) task performance is related to ability, while contextual performance is related to personality and motivation; and (c) task performance is more prescribed and constitutes in-role behavior, while contextual performance is more discretionary and extra-role.
The term job performance here refers to teacher job performance. Okeniyi [8] defined teacher job performance as teacher's capability to combine pertinent efforts of improving teaching-learning process. While Gaynor [9] defined teacher job performance as what a teacher does both inside and outside the classroom and how it effects on students' knowledge. Whereas Turanligil and Farooq [10] viewed teacher job performance as the overall expected value from an employee's behavior carried out over the course of a set period of time.
There are many factors predicting high or low performance of a teacher. The job satisfaction is one of the utmost extensively investigated variables in organizational or workplace psychology [11][12][13] and has been widely recognized as linked closely to the job performance of teachers. Showing high performance/ productivity when accomplishing a job may result in the job satisfaction [14][15]. Career prospects of a worker who performs well is more well than workers with moderate or low performance [16].
Despite the various definition of job satisfaction found in the literature, the two greatest shared definitions explain job satisfaction as positive psychological state ensuing from the evaluation of one's work experience as assisting the attainment of one's work beliefs [17,1342] and the degree to which an individual like or dislike his/her job [13,2]. Teacher job satisfaction is a theory based on the proposition that the happiest teacher is also the most creative teacher. Many researchers [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] found that factors such as salary, recognition, promotion opportunity, work itself, working conditions, work pressure, administrative support, supervision, relationship with superior and colleagues, and student-teacher relationship were strongly associated with the degree of teachers' job satisfaction.
Job satisfaction, in turn, plays an important role in rising or reducing performance. Despite the huge amount of current studies exploring the job performance of teachers [7,[26][27][28] and how job performance is predicted by their job satisfaction [26,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], we are still motivated to explore the topic to address the two following issues: (a) the need of improving the elementary school students' ability in reading, writing, and arithmetic  and (b) the need of having high qualified and committed teachers in teaching the future generations of nation [46][47].
As this study offers a fist look on the job satisfaction of elementary school teachers and its eventual effect on their performance in the context of Southern Papua, result of this study may theoretically contribute to the accessible group of understanding by providing a valuable extension of relevant studies in other countries. This study employed a quantitative research method using a survey research design which we briefly explained below.

Methods
In its nature, this study is a quantitative approach using a survey research design as it was sought to justify the job satisfaction of elementary school teachers' of Southern Papua and its eventual effect on their job performance. Werang [48] underlined six advantages of employing a survey approach as the following: (a) high representation, (b) low cost, (c) convenient data collecting, (d) good arithmetical result, (e) little investigator subjectivity, and (f) exact result.
Applying an incidental sampling, a total of 1062 teachers were established as informants. The informants were incidentally determined due to the following two thoughts: (a) most of the elementary schools are situated in the swampy remote areas and are difficult to reach [Table  1], and, (b) many remote elementary school teachers were not at school during the time of data collection. Adopted from Yunarti et al. [7] with a substantial adjustment in the number of informants Two types of survey questionnaire were adopted to elicit data on this topic. To collect the data, we distributed the two types of Indonesian language version of questionnaire to a total of 1062 teachers. In order that all the questionnaire were completely filled up and returned in 100 % response rate by the informants, we employed a face-to-face method by asking the readiness of each informant to fill-up the questionnaire and returned it directly to our team. Data on the job performance of teachers were elicited by utilizing a questionnaire of 15 items from a study steered by Asaloei et al. [43]. An Indonesian language version of the questionnaire was self-administered to a total of 1062 teachers. Each item of questionnaire used a four-point Likert's scale, scored from 1 (Strongly Disagree = SD) to 4 (Strongly Agree = SA). The samples of the English version of items are following: "I help students progress and class improvement", "I organize teaching-learning materials at the beginning of the school year", "I assess students work persistently", "I personally provide teaching-learning media to teach for understanding", and "I provide chance for students to lead the class-discussion".
Whereas data on the job satisfaction of teachers were elicited by utilizing a questionnaire of 18 items from a study steered by Werang and Agung [40]. Each item of questionnaire used a four-point Likert's scale, scored from 1 (Strongly Disagree = SD) to 4 (Strongly Agree = SA).
The sample of the English version of items are following: "I feel I was being paid in a fair amount for the work I do", "My superior is competent enough in doing his/her job", "I usually get the credit when I perform a good job," "I like all the people I work with," "The school's goals are clearly defined", "My work is very delightful".
Collected data were analyzed quantitatively using simple linear regression analysis technique by employing the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. One research hypothesis (H a ) was proposed to be examined that the performance of elementary school teachers of Southern Papua will be predicted significantly positively by their job satisfaction. This hypothesis was examined at the 0.05 level of significance using a simple linear regression analysis technique by employing the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.

Result and Discussion
Teachers are at the heart of education and their teaching quality is of the most critical factor for creating overall quality of education [49][50]. This study is aimed at describing the job satisfaction of elementary school teachers of Southern Papua, Indonesia, and its eventual impact on their job performance. The substantial impact is shown in Table 2 below. Data in Table 2 above revealed that the performance of elementary school teachers was significantly positively predicted by their job satisfaction as the R 2 value is .089 and the ρ value is .000. It means that the research hypothesis (H a ) that the performance of elementary school teachers in Southern Papua will be predicted significantly positively by their job satisfaction is confirmed.
Teachers' job satisfaction can lead to a sense of involvement and responsibility toward school effectiveness and student success alike. As the R 2 value was positive and significant at the level of alpha (α) = .05, it means increasing one point/unit in teachers' job satisfaction will increase 0.089 point/unit in teachers' job performance. Conversely, decreasing one point in teachers' job satisfaction will decrease 0.089 point/unit in teachers' job performance. It demonstrates that the more teachers are satisfied, the better teachers' job performance; the more teachers are dissatisfied, the worst teachers' performance. In other words, the more teachers are happy, the better they teach the youth; the more teachers are unhappy, the worse they teach the youth. Finding of this study is in line with Kaldenberg and Regrut [51] who argued that satisfied teachers tended to be more productive, creative and committed to the teaching profession.
Teachers play a critical role in confirming that students' academic achievement enhances every year since they are in charge of the classroom and the curriculum as well [52]. In order that teachers are capable to display this role well, principal's support and encouragement are indispensable. Teachers will respond to school principal if they are inspired, motivated, and supported. Teachers tend to feel more delighted when they work under a compassionate school principal [53,26]. Teachers will normally be satisfied when they have a good relationship with the school principal and partake actively in the school's decision-making process [54]. Teachers who are endorsed to partake actively in decision-making process concerning the school are more satisfied than those who would not [55,89]. Lumsden [56] argued that teachers who receive support from their school principal, work within a positive school climate and culture, and are involved in the decision-making process are more likely to succeed and remain in their teaching profession. In the same vein, Mulford [57,18] argued that teachers will be attracted to and stay in the profession if they feel they belong and believe they are contributing to the success of their school and students.
The school principals are the key to motivate and to support teachers to work hard and to produce more than what are required from them. The school principals are responsible to make teachers and other school's element move in the same direction. They need to be visible and involve actively in all school activities, not be perceived as always working behind a closed door in their office [54,101]. The yearly problem facing the teachers in Papua in general and in Southern Papua in particular is that many elementary school principals are not committed to their job and are not capable enough to run the school into its success. Many elementary school principals of Southern Papua were reported absent from their respective school [46][47] to engage with other attractive activities. The appointment of school principals which is based more on the authorities' political interest [44][45] seemed to contribute much to such behavior of the school principals. As the policy of appointing school principal was still going on in the Southern Papua context, elementary school teachers' dreams to have a sympathetic and caring school principal will never come true.

Conclusions
Referred to the statistical result, it can be concluded that the performance of elementary school teachers in Southern Papua is significantly positively affected by their job satisfaction as the R 2 value is .089 and the ρ value is .000. It inferred that 8.9 % of the performance of elementary school teachers in Southern Papua is justified by job satisfaction, while 91.1 % is justified by other factors.
Practical implication is that the finding may be imperative for the school leaders to enhance teachers' job satisfaction to promote teachers' performance. The school leaders can do this by creating conducive school environments, involving teachers in decision-making process, offering teachers with the highest possible salaries, and viewing teachers as the integrating part of school family. This finding might also be suitable for the teachers to benefit from the information of how they should interact with the superior and colleagues to cope with their feeling of dissatisfaction and the extent to which these feelings may directly affect their performance. Since this study is firstly conducted in the elementary schools of Southern Papua context, finding of this study may supposedly enlarge the knowledge by providing a valuable extension Universal Journal of Educational Research 8 (7): 2907-2913, 2020 2911 of relevant studies conducted in other countries.