GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS AND STUDENTS PERCEPTION OF FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS PERFORMANCE IN GEOGRAPHY EXAMINATION

ABSTRACT

The summary of this finding is on teachers and students perception of factors affecting  students performance  in Geography Examinations. The study has been able to identify the three hypotheses statement that were tested and rejected using chi-square methods of statistics. Hence, the three hypotheses were rejected.   The  three hypotheses identified the teachers and students  perception of factors  affecting  students  performance  in Geography Examinations. The findings showed that many factors were affecting academic performance of  students  in school. Hence that successful students have significant motivation for achievement from unsuccessful students.  Also academic achievement is highly correlated with parents socio economic status which lends a good support to the present findings.  However, as a result of lack of motivation, students have negative attitude in their studies which automatically resulted into poor performance in their studies.  It is therefore concluded that interest and attitude of students towards a particular subject is determined by the level of socio economic status of  their parents.  Hence, high motivating factor mostly from the parents and teachers lead to a better achievement on the part of the student as a whole.In order to improve the student academic excellence in their  need to encourage the student in order to display good attitude and better interest in all their subject mostly in geography, while the teacher is motivated in reciprocal as a result of good academic performance by the students.there is need for a good impact on academic knowledge on the students, teacher and parents coupled with the student’s interest in the subject and the display of positive attitude as earlier pointed out are good motivating factors which when combine together is assumed will result to a better achievement in geography.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0       INTRODUCTION

The term ‘‘examination’’ or ‘‘test’ has been defined as an instrument or systematic procedure for measuring a sample of a person’s behaviour with a view to evaluating that behaviour against standards i.e. in comparism with a given domain of performance tasks (criterion-referenced) or against norms i.e in comparism with others in the group (norm-referenced) (Gage and Berliner, 1979, Gronlund,1985).

Geography’s role is specifically stated in Section 4(6A) where geography has been listed as one of the core subjects at the Senior secondary level (now section 5(25A)). Students are expected to select ;One of Literature-in-English, History, Geography or Religious Studies as the core subject. Geography has also been grouped as part of the body of elective subjects. Therefore, every student will be expected to select three of those subjects depending on the choice of career up to the end of the second year and may drop one of the non-compulsory subjects out of the nine subjects in the last year of the senior high school course. The geography curriculum has special feature which include:

a.       The provision of a geography curriculum that is based on the choice of suitable and relevant themes,units, contents, teaching materials, students’ activities, teaching aids and evaluation.

b.      The reduction in the scope and content of the subject matter of senior secondary school geography without loosing the high quality required at that level.

c.       The inclusion of innovative elements into the teaching of syllabus through the emphasis placed on their practical geography throughout the 3-year course and the introduction of geographic principles, concepts and skills that are relevant to current trends in the discipline and useful for solving environmental problems.