Influence Of Students’ Attitudes On Academic Performance In Government Among Secondary Schools
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
General interest in Students’ Attitude and academic performances which is perceived as a practical choice by many students and educational institutions is increasing more and more in parallel with the advances in the information and communication technologies. High motivation level, maturity and self-discipline are seen as necessary for the achievement of educational programmes. A combination of cognitive style, personality attitude and self-expectations is asserted to be able to predict the achievement in Government. It has been shown that students’ attitude like motivation, learning style, gender and learning strategies play a very important role in academic achievement (Onyejiaku, 2010).
The term motivation refers to the theoretical construct used to explain behaviour. It represents the reasons for peoples’ actions, desires and needs. A motive is what prompts the person to act in certain way or at least develop as inclination for specific behaviour. For example, when a student does his/her work in school because they want a good grade, he or she show a similar connection between what he does and why he did it.
Cognitive learning styles are the information processing habit of an individual. Unlike individual differences in abilities, cognition describes a person’s typical mode of thinking, perceiving, remembering, or problem solving. Cognitive style is usually described as a personality dimension which influences attitudes, values, and social interaction. For example, ask yourself how you process experiences and knowledge and how you organize and retain information. Do you approach learning and teaching sequentially or randomly? Do you need to visualize the task before starting? Do you work quickly or deliberately? These are examples of cognitive learning style attitudes.
Gender attitudes refer to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. Examples of gender attitudes, in the United States (and most other countries) women earned significantly less money than men for similar work. There are some places where women do most house work than men. Also, men smoke more than women as female smoking have not traditionally been considered appropriate.
Jegede and Japlin (2014) have compared high achieving and low achieving students according to their study habits, purpose for learning, approaches to study, use of support systems, other commitments and self-perception and have shown that motivation is a factor affecting achievement.
Lee (2012), examined gender differences motivational and behavioural learning strategies in the learning environment and found highly significant gender differences in category of textual encoding strategies in which males showed stronger behavioural and motivational learning strategies.
Bandura (2013) stated that self-efficacy play a key role in the self-regulation of motivation. According to him, students motivate themselves and plan courses of actions designed to realize valued future.
Influence Of Students’ Attitudes On Academic Performance In Government Among Secondary Schools
Government is one of the subjects that is studied in secondary schools which give rise to the falling direction of students performance in many factors such as poor quality of learning materials according to Umoinyang (2011) and the quality of our secondary schools, they believe is that the performances of students at this initial level will further promote their performances at higher levels. In Nigeria, it is noted that there is a low-range of higher skilled trained Government (Abdull, 2012) and that no society can function effectively without adequate and trained manpower. This shows concern on enhancing students’ performance in Government in secondary schools and also train them to be future oriented students.
It is commonly accepted that most effective way to increase students interest in the learning of Government is by applying Government analysis to issues that students who get good grades and acquire knowledge during school often share core Government. They are self-motivated, organized, good communicators and curious. These qualities give them the motivation to attend class, take good notes and complete high quality work. The traits that made a student successful often translate into better jobs as well.
We must consider the range of student’s level and intellectual skill development, availability of resources materials that are suitable, relevant and appropriate for effective teaching and progressively adequate learning exercise.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
According to Thomas (2011), teachers have the greatest potential to influence the student’s education while student’s achievement is related to teacher’s competence in using different methods of teaching. By characteristics of students on the level of their performance, it might be easy to investigate if factors like sex, ages, habit, physical disability, intelligence quotient do affect their performances in Government. In other word, excellent academic performance by students is only attainable but could also be sustained through the teacher.
In a situation whereby the teacher fail to apply reasoning of collecting contents and considers the age of the students, level and intellectual skill and at the same time, no qualified teacher in Government, lack of textbooks etc, the students will not perform well. This study tends to examine the characteristics of students and academic performance in Government among secondary schools in Etinan Local Government Area. Specifically, how students’ characteristics would bring about excellent academic performance is through the teachers.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The general purpose of this study is to determine the influence of students’ attitudes on academic performance in Government among secondary schools in Etinan Local Government Area. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to:
- Ascertain how learning positive attitude to learning affect students’ academic performance in Government.
- Examine how negative attitude to learning affect academic performance in Government.
- Explore how indifference attitude to learning influence student’s academic performance in Government
1.4 Significance of the Study
The study under investigation is one of the current interests since functional education depends largely on effective and efficient instruction. Studies on students’ attitudes and their performances on Government are very insufficient. This study will not only encourage further research on this very important area but will also serve as a reference guide for such endeavour. Apart from adding to the existing body of knowledge, the finding of this study is expected to help us seek for proper useful suggestions on how the performances of students in Government could be raised. All these make this study to be very significant.
1.5 Research Questions
The following research questions were formulated to guide the study:
- To what extend does positive attitude affect academic achievement in Government
- How does negative attitude influence student’s academic achievement in Government.
- To what extent does indifference attitude to learn influence academic achievement in Government.
1.6 Research Hypotheses
The null hypotheses for this study are stated as follows:
- There is no significant difference between positive attitude affect students and academic achievement in Government.
- There is no significant difference between negative attitude influence students and academic achievement in Government.
There is no significant difference between students’ indifference attitude to learn and academic achievement in Government.