School Administrators utilization of social media and teachers job performance in public secondary schools of Akwa Ibom state

Received: 16-Mar-2023, Manuscript No. IJERR-23-98224; Editor assigned: 23-Mar-2023, Pre QC No. IJERR-23-98224 (PQ); Reviewed: 06-Apr-2023, QC No. IJERR-23-98224; Revised: 19-May-2023, Manuscript No. IJERR-23-98224 (R); Published: 16-Jun-2023, DOI: -

Keywords

Social media, Utilization, School administrator, Job performance.

Introduction

Within the last decade, social media and its applications have penetrated our daily life. It has managed to transform humans’ way of living while becoming one of the most important means of disseminating information and communication. With the aid of social media, information flow is fast and necessary for maximizing potentials and performance within an organization. Social media tools have become one of the ways for school administrators to quickly and efficiently disseminate information. This is because of the universal access to social media across all demographic groups as it often reaches people faster than traditional forms of communication used in the previous years. The use of social media is enhanced by the availability and access to internet for easy communication and dissemination of information [1]. With social media, dissemination of information by school administrators has become easy. It permits and favours information sharing; self- learning; teamwork; communication between school administrators, school administrators and teachers, teachers themselves and students and between students and teachers thereby and for improving access to information [2]. Social media has become an ideal space for school administrators and teachers to exchange information and knowledge in a swift, simple and convenient way. It is also used to create personal profiles and make friends on a reciprocal basis. Most times, school administrators most times; disseminate huge amount of content and information to teachers via social media and mostly the information and content shared can reach a great number of targeted teachers easily because they have access to internet [3]. School administrators can use any social media applications for their official purpose of disseminating information such as Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, Skype, LinkedIn and Photo-sharing sites. Facebook is one of the largest social global networks that has taken the front burner among social networking sites [4].

Facebook constantly improves and renews its features to meet the demands of their users. It basically facilitates its users to create their profiles, social pages, groups. In addition, Facebook provides the facilities of messages, notifications of events, games, and calls.

The utilization of social media for information dissemination in organizations has always been of great concern because of its importance. It is believed that organizations can perform optimally when a network of information flow is developed among the various operation levels. The effective flow of information should lead to effective management in an organization [5]. A good measure of information disseminat ion effectiveness is for the receiver to understand the exact purpose and meaning intended for a message by the sender. In a situation where irrelevant, unwanted, superfluous and unreliable information are passed, the tendency is for wrong decisions to be taken. Observations revealed that there is usually the problem of inadequate dissemination of information on the improvement and performance of teachers’ job [6].

Teachers Job performance refers to the quality of the good work of a teacher. Teachers Job performance is associated with the ability of a teacher be aware of assigned targets, fulfilling expectations and achieving targets or accomplishing a standard set of tasks for the organization. Teachers Job performance is directly related to the efficiency of the teacher because teachers’ job performance tends to increase due to a system of stress reduction in the school environment. The secondary schools which are well aware of this fact have fully concentrated on the factors that can affect their teachers’ job performance [7]. There are number of factors (internal and external) that affect teachers’ job performance or the success of a teacher in the school. Individual ability, knowledge and skill can be examples of internal factors while the school environment. Characteristics of assigned tasks, incentive, organizational structure and human resource Management practices are examples of external factors [8].

Although the concepts of social media and teachers’ job performance have wider implications within the school environment, there is no conclusive evidence from previous research identifying the relationship among these variables in Akwa Ibom state. Therefore, this research was aimed at filling the identified gap and providing recommendations to school administrators and teachers on the relationship between school administrators’ utilization of social media and teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools of Akwa Ibom state [9].

Statement of the problem

The delay in disseminating of information in the school system has received scholarly attention in recent years. School administrators and teachers are aware of the critical role of information in modern society. This is because of the general perception that anyone who is not informed is deformed. Information is the live wire of any organization that plans to be efficient, effective and productive [10]. The school as a social organization needs effective and efficient information systems by the school administrators to enhance teachers’ job performance. The school administrators have a lot of roles to play in the school such as the supervision of instruction, general administration of the school and maintaining schoolcommunity relations.

Other roles are maintaining a balance in the studentpersonnel services, and staff-personnel services in the school system all of which are aimed at improving the teaching and learning processes in the school. These roles can be achieved with effective information system in the school which may be verbal or non-verbal [11].

It has been observed by the researchers that many school administrators do not integrate social media tools like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram for a faster and more convenient way of disseminating information to encourage teachers’ job performance rather they use outdated methods like notice boards, calling of general meeting, sending a messenger, disseminating information in unconducive environments and sometimes having the school administrator go to a teacher’s house even late in the night to pass urgent and important information which the teacher will use during the next school day. Therefore, the present study investigated the relationship between school administrators’ utilization of social media and teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools of Akwa Ibom state [12].

Research hypotheses

H_o1: There is no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa
H_o2: There is no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of LinkedIn and teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom state [13].

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The researchers adopted causal comparative research design for the study. Salkind defined causal comparative design as a research design that seeks to find relationships between independent and dependent variables after and action or event has already occurred. The researcher’s goal is to determine whether the independent variable affected the dependent variable by comparing two or more groups of individuals [14].

The study was conducted in state government public secondary school in Akwa Ibom state. Thus the topic of this research work has relationship with the study area in that social media attribute mentioned in the review are very common among the school administrators and teachers in the state. This implies that school administrators and teachers from this area are frequent users of social media platform such as Facebook and LinkedIn, which they use in communicating and dissemination of information to each other [15]. The population of the study comprises all the two hundred and fifty three (253) Principals in State Government owned public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom state. The researcher adapted formula to determine the sample size for the study. This formula uses the normal approximation with a 95 per cent confidence level and 5 per cent error tolerance. The researchers saw the formula as appropriate formula in determining a specific sample size. The sample size for this study therefore consisted of one hundred and fifty five (155) school principals from the two hundred and thirty (253) principals in state government owned public secondary schools in the three senatorial districts of Akwa Ibom state [16].

The researchers used stratified random sampling technique to select one hundred and fifty five (155) school principals. The use of stratified random sample is meant to be an unbiased representation of a group. The researchers a structured questionnaire titled School Administrators’ Utilization of Social Media Questionnaire (SAUSMQ) and Teachers Job Performance Questionnaire (TJPQ), these was used as an instrument for data collection. These instruments were developed on a four point rating scale of strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree. The instrument was validated by six experts in the test and measurement, five in university of Uyo and one in Abubakar Tafawa Balewa university for assessing the content and face validity of the instrument. The purpose was for the experts to preliminary validate the instrument by going through proper wording, appropriateness, identify errors, clarity and adequacy of the items. The modified items became acceptable and adopted after validators observations and confirmation in the questionnaire [17]. The researchers used Cronbach Alpha reliability statistic to determine the reliability of the instrument and the reliability coefficient of .80 was obtained. Data generated was analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) for testing for hypotheses at 0.05.

Results and Discussion

Null hypothesis 1

There is no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state [18].

Table 1: Summary of Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) analysis on the relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state.

As shown on Table 1, since the SPSS probability value of 0.00 is less than the criterion value of 0.05 with the obtained r-value of .614 and at 153 degree of freedom, the null hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state was rejected; whereas, the alternate hypothesis which state that there is significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state is accepted. This implies that teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom state is significantly related to school administrators’ utilization of Facebook.

Null hypothesis 2

There no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of LinkedIn and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state.

Table 2: Summary of Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) analysis on the relationship between school administrators’ utilization of linkedin and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state utilization of linkedin.

As shown on Table 2, since the SPSS probability value of 0.00 is less than the criterion value of 0.05 with the obtained r-value of 0.699^** and 153 degree of freedom, the null hypothesis which states that there no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of LinkedIn and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state is rejected; whereas, the alternate hypothesis which state that there is a significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of LinkedIn and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state is accepted. This implies that teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State is significantly related to the school administrators’.

Discussion of findings

The data in Table 1 revealed that, since the SPSS probability value of 0.00 is less than the criterion value of 0.05 with the obtained r-value of .614 and at 153 degree of freedom, the null hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state was rejected; whereas, the alternate hypothesis which state that there is significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state is accepted. This implies that teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State is significantly related to school administrators’ utilization of Facebook. This finding was in line with the findings of on the effects of social media use on employee performance. The findings of the study reveals that using social networking like Facebook to disseminate information in a place could help promote teachers job satisfaction. It is as a result of the job satisfaction that many teachers increase their performances at work place. Teacher job performance is very much important to sustain the school system. It is because when teachers are satisfied with their job, the contribution towards the school will be more and committed. Hence a good information system would help place many teachers in order to enable them discharge their duties in time.

Adetimirin and John investigated use of Social media for information dissemination by undergraduates in university of Ibadan, Nigeria and found that Facebook was the most used social media and academic information, videos and pictures were the information disseminated. Accessing the internet, erratic power supply, sharing information on some sites, different versions of same information and time constraint were the major challenges encountered by the undergraduates in using the social media. Aguenza, Al- Kassem and mat-som attempted to study the effect of Facebook use on productivity in the workplace, looking at the challenges and constraints. He established that the use of facebook has a positive impact on employee productivity, twoway communication and effective collaboration among employees. Also, Adzharuddin and Kander reported that those in communication or media-related positions are most likely to use facebook as part of their job, especially as a method for facilitating outreach to a variety of audiences. Using Facebook not only helps the organizations to have a good contact with who they relate with but it is also learnt that it bring a good impression. Besides that organizations may be able to effectively manage people’s impression towards the organization through their interactions with people on Facebook.

The data in Table 2, revealed that, since the SPSS probability value of 0.00 is less than the criterion value of 0.05 with the obtained r-value of .699** and 153 degree of freedom, the null hypothesis which states that there no significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of linkedin and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom State is rejected; whereas, the alternate hypothesis which state that there is a significant relationship between school administrators’ utilization of LinkedIn and teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom State is accepted. This implies that teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State is significantly related to the school administrators’ utilization of LinkedIn. This finding was in line with the findings of Bhanot who studied the impact of social media on company performance by interviewing twenty five social media experts and found that social media can be used for internal communication as well as a method of engaging with both the existing and the potential new customer. He argued that the business context has been revolutionalized by the arrival of several sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and much more. He concluded that companies that invest early to harness the power of social media claim higher returns, with even greater gains predicted to be on the way. Conducted a study on the impact of social networking (facebook, twitter, slide share and linkedin) on employee performance. They found that social networks affects working situations of employees, employees’ skills/ability correlation and knowledge, qualification, productivity and motivation level. Also, the motives of using social media vary from one person to another. Further, people do connect to LinkedIn for professional purposes which could lead to high job performance.

Keels studied the effect of social media use in organizations to determine how social networks are used, if its use enhances or reduces output and how organization-friendly design and use might advance in a Large Techno-savvy organization through a broad survey and 30 focused interviews. He found that extensive social and work uses with complex patterns that differ with a software system and networker age. LinkedIn was used by recent students, young professionals and older professionals. LinkedIn focused on professional information, encouraged users to construct abbreviated curriculum Vitae and to establish connections.

LinkedIn was also useful for positioning young professionals in job markets, used to build and maintain external professional networks. Investigated an assessment of social media use on employee performance in public university colleges: A case of rongo university, Kenya. This study sought to establish the relationship of social media use and employee performance in public universities in Kenya. They found that twitter, linkedin and whatsapp affect employee performance. The study concluded that employee performance associated with linkedin was attributed to knowledge, information sharing, career advancement and collaborations. Other social media had inverse relationship with employee performance because their usage was not related to actual assigned duties.

Conclusion

Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn; the present study provided empirical evidence on school administrators’ utilization of social media and teacher’s job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria. The findings revealed that, school administrators’ utilization of Facebook and LinkedIn relate with teachers’ job performance in public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria. Therefore, using social media like, Facebook and LinkedIn can enhance teachers’ job performance in Akwa Ibom state public secondary schools, Nigeria.

Recommendations

Based on the findings and conclusions of the study, the following recommendations were made:

• Teachers should be encouraged by school administrators to always access Facebook groups and pages that would facilitate team work and which would enhance teachers’ job performance.
• Teachers should be allowed to use LinkedIn for knowledge sharing to benefit both the school and teachers themselves as well as to increase teachers’ job performance which will directly or indirectly enhance students’ academic performance.

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