PERCEIVED AS DIFFICULT IN GEOGRAPHY BY SECONDARY SCHOOL LEARNERS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Publishers for textbooks up to junior secondary schools incorporate pictures and graphics to aid student performance and commitment in their curriculum. This has been found to help in the engagement of students in Mathematics whose fear inducement mostly have nothing to do with the subject of the general fear associated with it. This is the same to any subject one fears.

Studies show that children (primary and secondary school students) will find a particular subject difficult if certain associations have been made with it. Like a particular topic or an incident associated to the subject. Other times it is the attitude or the teaching style of the teacher that come to bear upon the student’s attitude to the subject so that if the students hate a particular subject, chances are that they will project the same affect on the subject. Even in most cases, it is particular topics in a particular subject or range of topics. In this case teachers have to employ special methods in teaching them to students.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Teaching some topics to students tend to be more difficult than others. Whether it is the particular set of students, their academic backgrounds, the topics or their cultural backgrounds, these topics prove difficult to the students or most of them. And once a teacher begin seeing a pattern developing or a prior tendency of the topic proving difficult for the students, there is need to research upon it so that a solution would be found. This is the background question that has brought the present research into being to studying certain topics that are found difficult by geography students at senior secondary school level.