RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF SELECTED TEACHERS’ VARIABLES AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN BIOLOGY AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS STUDENTS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA.
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ABSTRACT
This study investigated the relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitude towards academic achievement in biology among senior secondary schools in Ondo State, Nigeria. It involved descriptive survey research designs. The sample, 360 respondents which consists of 180 biology teachers and 180 senior secondary school three students were randomly selected from 36 senior secondary schools from the three Senatorial Districts of Ondo State using stratified random sampling technique. Teachers’ teaching attitudinal scale, Science oriented attitudinal scale and an inventory which requested for data from records on students’ senior secondary school certificate examination grades in biology were used for data collection. Data collected for the study were analysed using correlation matrix and multiple regression analysis. The results showed that significant relationships existed among the independent variables and students’ academic achievement in biology. Also 62.5% of the variance observed in students’ achievement in biology was explained by linear combination of the five predictor variables. Students’ attitude was the most potent contributor to the prediction. Teachers’ workload was the least contributor to the prediction. It was recommended that constant workshops and seminars should be made available by government for teachers to attend for the improvement of their teaching skills. Teachers and students were also charged to change their attitudes positively towards the teaching and learning of biology.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Success in certain endeavours may be contingent upon certain factors. This may also be true of achievement in schooling. Good achievement in schooling could be the partial contributions of an individual’s gender sensitivity, cognitive, affective (attitude) and psychomotor domains. Adodo (2007) argued that one key overriding factor for the success of students’ academic achievement is the teacher. In the same vein, Ibrahim (2000) believed that teachers’ qualifications and exposure can go a long way to bring about pupils’ high academic achievement. It is probably for this reason, Ibukun (2009) asserted that no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers. Considering the assertions of Ibrahim (2000), Adodo (2007), and Ibukun (2009), it implies that teachers’ role in the preparation of students to succeed in examinations cannot be undermined.
Usman (2003) argued that shortage of qualified teachers is responsible for the poor academic achievement observable among the students while Ademulegun (2001) argued that students taught by more qualified and experienced teachers in terms of knowledge of the subject matter perform better than those taught by less qualified but experienced teachers. The educational analysis recently carried out in Nigeria by the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS, 2005) indicated that more than forty nine percent (49%) of the teachers in Nigeria are unqualified. This revealed the quality of teachers teaching various school subjects to the secondary school students. The teachers teaching biology as a subject in the various secondary schools would probably be among the said over forty nine percent unqualified teachers.
As important as knowledge of biology is to human beings, it appears students’ achievement in this subject at the secondary school level is becoming worse than in the other science subjects. Ibe and Maduabum (2001) argued that candidates performance at the senior school certificate examinations (SSCE) conducted by West African Examination Council have consistently remain poor, with biology having the highest enrolments and the poorest results over the years. Looking at the importance of biology to the national development and considering the state of poor academic achievement in this very subject at the secondary school level which incidentally serves as the foundation for advance learning and professional courses in fields such as medicine, pharmacy, nursing and other allied courses, the poor academic achievement observable in the biology results of the students should be a thing of serious concern to any citizen of Nigeria. The teachers’ attitude (TA), teachers’ qualifications (TQ), teachers’ workload (TW) in terms of number of students handled by teachers and the experience possessed by teachers (TE) teaching biology as a subject to the students coupled with the students’ attitude (SA) toward the subject may be responsible in part for the downward trend in achievement observed in the results of the students in the subject.
Attitude as a factor could be viewed as the totality of an individual’s inclination towards object, institution or idea. Kerlinger (1977) stressing that it is an organized predisposition to think, feel, perceive and behave toward a referent or cognitive object. Attitude could be learnt or formed and acquired from member of the family, teacher and peer group. The learner acquires from the teacher’s disposition to form attitude towards learning which could positively or negatively affect his performance. Bandura (1971) posited that behaviours are acquired by watching another person who could be the parent, teacher or a peer group member performing the behaviour. Teachers are role models to the students because as they act, so do the students demonstrate and perfect such act or behaviour. It is very unfortunate that little did many teachers realize that the manner they handled the teaching of biology as a subject, behave and interact with the students as biology teachers could produce major effect on students’ achievement. Some teachers seem to have developed negative attitude towards teaching the students this subject (biology) that is very vital to human living. This may have been responsible for the negative attitude developed towards learning biology by the students. Duyilemi (1996) argued that some science teachers showed positive attitude towards teaching the science subjects while some exhibited negative attitude towards teaching science subjects to the students. Ali and Aigbomian (1990) have argued that the extent a student prefers a subject, to that extent the student works hard to achieve in it. A close examination of the submissions of Ali et al (1990) and Duyilemi (1996) revealed that academic achievement may be dependent upon positive attitude from the teachers and the students in the teaching/learning processes.
In his contribution, Okebukola (1986) pointed attention to the quality of biology teachers as the prime factor attributed to the cause of students’ consistent poor academic achievement in examinations. Oloyede (1992) seems to have proved the observation of Okebukola (1986) right by showing that a significant difference exists in the achievement of the students taught by professionally trained and non-professionally trained teachers in the art of teaching biology. Researchers have carried out studies on teachers’ demographic variables such as qualifications, age, experience, gender, attitude and students’ academic performance. For instance, Adepoju (2002) reported that a significant relationship exists between teachers’ variables such as gender, area of specialization, possession of academic qualification in education and the learning outcomes of secondary school students, but Igwe (1990) found no significant relationship between teachers’ qualifications and students’ achievement in biology, chemistry and physics at senior secondary school certificate level. Coleman (1966) and Jenecks (1972) expressed disagreement about the role of teachers’ qualification in accounting for educational outcomes. Although, Ayodele (1997) found a positive relationship between teachers’ qualifications and students’ academic achievement, Nyikana (1982) found out that inadequate qualifications of teachers contributed to students repetition of a class. However, Khan and Bertecher (1988) found out that there is a high and significant relationship between teachers qualification and global wastage ratio in basic education in Madagascar. Also Brembeck (1991) reported that the quality of teachers shows a greater relationship to students’ achievement than either facilities or curricula. Nevertheless, Ajewole (1990) did not completely agree with these findings and showed passive reservation concerning the relationship between teachers’ qualification and student’s achievement but concluded that there is need to carry out more careful investigations about it.
Studies have also shown that teachers experience exerts a great influence on the academic achievement of students. Ilugbusi, Falola and Daramola (2007) showed that teaching experience in schools count significantly in the determination of students’ achievement in external examinations such as West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE), National Examination Council (NECO), National Business and Technical Education Examinations and the Unified tertiary Matriculation Examination. According to them, inexperienced teachers are easily upset and destabilized by unfamiliar situations. This may imply that inexperienced teachers could get confused, mixed up the content of the topics taught to the students and hence the students will receive wrong information which would definitely lead to poor achievement among the students, while the experienced teachers are already immune to classroom provocative situations and have developed resistance and several solutions against classroom confusion inducing agents. Also, Omenyi (1994) found that a significant difference exists between the performance ratings of inexperienced biology teachers and those of experienced teachers with the mean performance ratio of experience teachers being almost a factor of two larger than the inexperienced teachers. In the same vein, Gibbons, Kimmel and O’shea (1997) reported that there was a significant relationship between teachers’ experience and students’ academic achievement since students taught by more experienced teachers achieved at a higher level due to the fact that the experienced teachers have mastered the subject content and acquired cumulated classroom management skills and strategies to handle and cope with different classroom problems.
Literature has also indicated that teachers’ attitude and students’ attitude have exerted some influence on the academic achievement of students. For instance, Yara (2009) reported that teacher’s attitude towards science has strong relationship with students science achievement as well as the students’ attitude towards science. Onocha (1985) showed that teachers’ attitude towards science is a potent predictor of students’ academic achievement in science and attitude towards science learning, but Igwe (1985) reported that the effect of students’ attitude on achievement in mathematics is not as strong as the effect of teachers attitude on students achievement in mathematics. In a similar study Odunsi (1988) revealed that teachers’ attitude towards Integrated Science teaching influence students attitude toward learning Integrated Science and achievement in the subject. Also, Ogunwuyi (2000) reported a significant relationship between teachers’ attitude and students achievement in Integrated Science. However, Jackson (1968) argued that no apparent relationship exists between attitude and academic achievement. In some other studies carried out by researchers such as Ajayi (1999), it was revealed that no significant relationship exists between teachers workload and student’s academic achievement while Kolawole (1982) found that a negative relationship exists between the academic performance of students and class size but Walberg (1969) proved that a significant and consistent relationship exists in the academic achievement of students in small classes of between 1-20 students that obtained higher scores in science tests than their counterparts in large classes of more than 20 students.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
From the above, it is observed that previous studies have centered attention mainly on investigating the difference or relationship between individual (single) teachers’ variables and students’ academic achievement. Apparently further studies are required to investigate the combined contribution of teachers’ qualification (TQ), teachers’ attitude (TA), teachers’ workload (TW), teachers experience (TE) and students’ attitude (SA) towards students’ academic achievement at the senior secondary school level. Therefore, this study sought to investigate how well academic achievement in biology at the SSCE level could be explained by the combined influence of teachers’ qualification, teachers’ workload, teachers’ experience, teachers’ attitude and students’ attitude.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY WAS TO EXAMINE THE RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF SELECTED TEACHERS’ VARIABLES AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN BIOLOGY AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS STUDENTS IN ONDO STATE.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The following research questions were generated to guide the study.
- Are there any relationship among teachers’ qualifications, teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, teachers’ experience, students’ attitude and students’ academic achievement in biology at the SSCE level?
- To what extent would teachers’ attitude, students attitude, teachers’ workload, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualifications when taken together predict students’ academic achievement at the SSCE level?
- What is the relative contribution of each of the teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience, and teachers’ qualifications to the prediction of academic achievement of the Senior Secondary School Students at the SSCE level?
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