ABSTRACT
Poor academic achievement in secondary schools has remained a source of worry to stakeholders in education. To this effect, the study sought to investigate the effects of educational counselling and live modelling techniques on academic achievement motivation of students in secondary schools in Kogi State. The study was guided by four research questions and two hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. A quasi-experimental design was adopted for the study. A total of 65 students who performed poorly from 3 co-educational schools were used for the study. The instrument for data collection was a 20 item questionnaire which was titled Academic Achievement Motivation Scale (AAMS). The instrument was validated by three experts, all from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha statistics which yielded estimated values of 0.93 and 0.94. The students in the three experimental groups were pretested with AAMS before receiving treatment on educational counselling and live modelling techniques. After the treatment, AAMS was re-administered on both groups as post test. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the four research questions while Analysis of Covariance, (ANCOVA) was used to test the two hypotheses. It was found that: the two treatment groups had better academic achievement motivation as shown by their pre-test post-test mean differences. Also, gender had no significant influence on the academic achievement motivation of students. It was recommended that guidance counsellors, educational psychologists and curriculum planners should plan a programme of intervention based on the principles for motivating students; and the federal and state ministries of Education should organize and sponsor workshops and seminars for educational psychologists and school guidance counsellors on how to implement educational counselling and live modelling techniques.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Poor academic achievement in the educational sector particularly at the primary and secondary school levels has been decried by many Nigerians. Year after year, a large number of candidates sit for the West African Examination Council (External) since they could not make their papers in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). There have been instances of people sitting for this examination for upwards of six times without getting the required five credits to gain admission into institutions of higher learning (Adenusi, 2003). For instance, West African Examination Council (WAEC) (2005) revealed that the percentage of failure rate for English language in the past years surpasses that of the percentage of credit level, while in Mathematics, a fluctuation trend within the years was recorded by the candidates.
A breakdown of the statistics on the failure rate of candidates for 2001 revealed that out of 1,025,027 students, only 26,725 (26.07 percent) scored credit and above, 441,009 candidates failed (41.13 percent) and 316,769 (24.68 percent) got pass in Nigeria. For 2002, out of 909,888 students, 24.57 percent representing 223,568 students recorded credit, 298,562 (31.89 percent) scored pass and 40.18 percent of 387,758 students scored F9 (WASSCE, 2005).
Statistics of entries and result for the May/June 2009 West African Senior School Certificate Examination reviewed by 2010 WASSEC state committee meeting in October 12th and 14th 2010 shows candidates performance on state basis (Omolewa, 2010). On the average, about 29.93% of the candidates that sat for the 2009 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in Nigeria obtained a minimum or grade 6 in at least five subjects including English Language and General Mathematics. Bauchi state topped the list with 65.53% followed closely by Abia with 63.38% and Lagos with 49.46%. The least percentage pass was recorded by Jigawa state (2.6%) while the least number of candidates that sat for the examination in the entire country was recorded by Adamawa state. Based on the rating, Kogi state was not among 13 states whose percentage was 30.17% and above (Omolewa, 2010). In another statistics on state basis reviewed by the committee, it was stated that of the 14,295 candidates sat for the WASSCE 2009 and only 8,381 passed with credits in five subjects including Mathematics and English Language. This gave a percentage of 20.30% for Kogi state (Omolewa, 2010).
The analysis above implies that there is poor academic achievement being recorded in Nigeria secondary schools in general and Kogi sate in particular which calls for ways of improving the situation. In addition, there is generally an increase in dropout rate and students withdrawing from Federal and state secondary schools to “private schools” in Kogi state (Adenusi, 2003). This could be as a result of poor academic achievement recorded by the students. Experts like Hein, (2007) and Woolfolk (2010) attribute these poor academic achievements of students to unfavourable attitude of the parents, inability of the school to provide favourable conditions to learning. Omolewa, (2010) attribute it to societal and peer group factors. However, that students fail or perform poorly in their academic according to Eze (2004) is not because they do not possess the mental ability to do well but because they do not know or do not use the most effective methods of studying or are not motivated well enough to study. It is possible therefore that lack of motivations is partially the cause of students’ poor academic achievement.
Motivation as defined by Woolfolk (2010) an internal state that arouses, directs and maintains behaviour. Motivation can either be intrinsic (internal stimuli) or extrinsic (external stimuli). At times it might be necessary to provide students with incentives for accomplishing a task, but ideally attempt should be made to nurture the students to be intrinsically motivated. Motivation is a key component in learning. The ideas of motivation as described here are broadly conceived to include an understanding of ways in which the knowledge can be used. Unless we know “the reasons why”, we may not be very involved in using the knowledge that may be instilled in us even by the most severe and direct teaching (Hein, 2007).
Motivation according to Ngwoke (1995) has to do with the internal state or mental and psychological set in an individual which compels, energizes, sustains and directs the individual’s activity towards a goal. Motivation is a psychological construct which explains purposive or goal-directed behaviour in human beings. Motivation explains, for example, why some students sweat to pass their examinations, and while some of them wait to cheat in the examinations. It also explains why an individual preserves and deprives himself of some pleasures in order to achieve a life goal. The impetus that drives human beings into setting and attaining significant goals in life is motivation. Motivation in the context of this study therefore, is concerned with how behaviour gets started, is energized, is sustained, is directed, is stopped, and what kind of subjective reaction is present in the organisms while all this is going on.
Achievement is important not only to students but to entire human race. Achievement is a stable, learned characteristic in which satisfaction is obtained by striving for excellence (Feldman, 2002). Achievement is used to assess the extent students have learnt the content in a particular course after receiving instruction in a course (Ifelunni, 1997). In this study therefore, achievement is a situation where learning outcome of students is appraised.
Academic achievement is a situation where learning outcome is appraised in terms of matching it with standardized testing and its successful completion (Feldman, 2002). It is all about what students can actually do when they have finished a course of study. Achievement is a stable, learned characteristic in which satisfaction is obtained by striving for excellence (Feldman, 2002). Academic achievement according to Sinclair (2003) is success which a student attends especially after a lot of effort. It is the fact of achieving in educational endeavour. In the context of this study therefore, academic achievement is success which a student attends after being appraised in terms of matching it with standardized testing and its successful completion. Academic achievement motivation is an internal state or mental and psychological state in an individual which compels, energizes, sustains and directs the individual’s activity towards a goal. In other words, it is the internal drive or urge that makes an individual to set up a difficult academic goal, fashion out strategies in achieving the goal and persist in tackling the task so as to achieve a standard of excellence. Academic achievement is pertinent to students because it determines goal attainment. Inability to achieve what a learner is supposed to achieve, is a function of so many factors. According to Momoh (2002) these factors can be classified into hereditary, personality, environmental, instructional, health and nutritional, reinforcement and school management. The author also said that there are similar ways of categorizing these factors. Momoh (2002:114):
The student factors such as attitudes, individual differences, physical health and readiness to learning. Teacher, instructional curriculum factors such as teacher attitude to students, types of classrooms control, curriculum contents, instructional contents, and preparation. Institutional factors such as the type of school, population control, discipline and personal interaction. However, some of these factors may not have long term effect on the academic achievement motivation of a student because they are vulnerable to changes and improvement when they become corrected.
Another factor that plays an important role in the academic achievement motivation of students is their gender. Gender highlights the fact of being male or female (Hansan, 2000). It represents the differences in sex, that is, either male or female, boy or girl, man or woman. Gender is determined by the conception of tasks, functions and roles attributed to women and men in society (Gawafer, 2011). Gender refers to socially constructed roles and socially learned behaviours and expectations associated with males and females (Okeke, 2000). Gender stereotyping is linked to all the domains of learning such that there are different expectations for male and female behaviour in all categories of learning (Damar, 2009).
Gender could influence academic achievement motivation. Lack of academic achievement motivation can be addressed through behaviour modification. Different kinds of behaviour modification techniques like proximity control, over correction, group counselling, individual counselling, aversive therapy, reinforcement among others have been used for intervention on addressing the problem of academic achievement motivation among secondary school students (Nickerson, 2009). Psychological principles and the experiences of counsellors and teachers support the following techniques for addressing lack of academic achievement motivation of students (Chidume, 2003). These techniques include, finding special skills, training in skills, (already acquired), discussion, group guidance among others. Yet decline of academic achievement motivation among secondary school students were on the increase. This lack of academic achievement motivation is evident in the poor academic performance released by the West African Examination on written and oral examinations taken by secondary school students (Adeglile, 2005). This was also supported by deviant examination behaviour exhibited by students at all levels of education. For example, most students who sat for May/June Senior School Certificate examination (2009) were reported by examination invigilators to have been found carrying books into the examination hall (Ike, 2009). The magnitude and dimensions which it has assumed had in the recent time, made the trend a public concern. The loopholes inherent in the control measures presently used, have agitated the mind of the researcher to seek behaviour modification techniques appropriate to the problem. On account of this, the researcher intends to apply educational counselling and live modelling techniques to see their effects on academic achievement motivation of Kogi State secondary school students.
