Author: Philimini Philemon, Demetria Gerold Mkulu

Abstract: Motivation is the heartbeat to students’ retention. It keep learners active and alive to remain at school until completion. Students who join secondary education have diverse needs as they come from diverse walks of life. Therefore, motivation stimulate them while at school by meeting their diverse personal needs. This study aimed at exploring the impact of motivation on students’ retention in Public secondary schools in Rorya Dis-trict, Tanzania. The study was based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs theory of motivation. The study adopt-ed a mixed research approach and an explanatory sequential design. The sample sizes of one hundred and twenty six (n=126) respondents obtained through stratified random sampling, purposive, snowball and sim-ple random sampling techniques were involved. Questionnaires, unstructured interviews and a document re-view checklist were used to collect data. Validity and reliability were checked. The result of test-retest was 0.87. The validity of the tools was assured by sending tools to education foundations research experts. Therefore, the instruments were valid and reliable. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics with the help of SPSS version 20 and content analysis approach. The findings indicated that motivation greatly influence secondary school students’ retention. The study recommended that, the teachers and all educa-tional stakeholders should actively participate in the motivation of students to continue with the school by ensuring a safe, active parenting role as well as supportive and conducive environment for a student suc-cessful completion of his or her studies. Students’ need care, love, and respect to remain at school until com-pletion.

Keywords: Motivation, Retention, Public secondary schools.

Article Info: Received: 07 Nov 2020; Received in revised form: 10 Dec 2020; Accepted: 18 Dec 2020; Available online: 30 Dec 2020

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.56.70