Teacher motivation is central to education quality: motivated teachers plan lessons more effectively, demonstrate stronger pedagogical practices, and create supportive classroom environments that promote learning (Hanushek 2020; Ronfeldt, Loeb and Wyckoff 2013; Skaalvik and Skaalvik 2007; World Bank 2018). Yet in many low resource countries, including Ghana, teachers often work under difficult conditions — including large class sizes, limited resources and weak institutional support — which heighten the risk of demotivation and burnout (Webb et al. 2004; Buchanan 2010).
These challenges are especially acute for public kindergarten teachers in northern Ghana, who play a foundational role in early childhood education (Gertler et al. 2014; McCoy et al. 2016; Andrew et al. 2024) but operate in some of the most constrained environments in the system.
Using detailed primary survey data collected from 330 kindergarten teachers in northern Ghana as part of the evaluation of a large-scale government early childhood education programme (Augsburg et al. 2022), this paper examines the determinants of demotivation with the aim of helping to inform policies that can strengthen teacher motivation, retention, and support in low-resource early childhood education settings.