ABSTRACT
Since secondary school students come from different families, it is
basic that they have different family background and experiences including
academic and social values. The success of students therefore depends
significantly on the family structure which provides enabling environment or
otherwise where learning could be encouraged. Thus, this study investigated
influence of family background on academic performance of secondary school
students in Ilorin South Local Government Area (LGA) Kwara State.
The target population for this study was secondary school students in
Ilorin South Local Government Area, Kwara State. However, a sample of two
hundred (200) respondents participated in the study. The simple random sampling
technique was adopted to select the respondents. Five null hypotheses were
formulated and tested using the t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA)
statistical measures.
The results of the analysis revealed that low educational level of
parents affects students’ academic performance because it undermines their
contributions in solving students’ academic challenges. Similarly, poor
accommodation at home is another factor that hinders students’ academic
performance. The results of the tested hypotheses revealed that there was no
significant difference in the influence of family background on academic
performance of students based on religion, parents’ educational qualification,
contrarily, there was significant difference in the influence of family
background on academic performance of students based on gender.
Based on the findings of this study,
it was recommended that parents should adequately monitor their children’s
academic performance. Also parents should ensure that cordial relationship is
established between them and their children. On the part of the government, the
three tiers should work out effective modality for the training of guidance
counsellor and adequate employ their in schools.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgement iv
Abstract vi
Table of Contents vii
List of tables x
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background to the study 1
Statement to the problem 16
Research questions 18
Research Hypotheses 19
Purpose of study 20
Significance of the study 21
Scope of the study 23
Operational definition of terms 24
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELATED
LITERATURE
Introduction 25
Parental environment and academic
performance
of students 26
Socio-economic status and academic
performance
of students 30
Family career development and
students academic
performance 33
Parental Career Development and
Student Academic
Performance 36
Factor responsible for divorce 38
Parent and child relationship and
academic
performance of students 40
Instructional materials and academic
performance of
students 41
Effect of marital problem on academic
achievement
of students 42
Summary of the reviewed of related
literature 44
CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
Introduction 46
Research Design 46
Sample and sampling techniques 47
Instrumentation 48
Psychometric property of the
instrument 49
Reliability 50
Procedure for data administration and
collection 51
Method of data analysis 52
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS
Introduction 53
Demographic data 53
Hypotheses testing 60
Summary of findings 68
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION
AND
RECOMMENDATION
Introduction 69
Discussion 70
Conclusion 79
Implication of the findings 81
Recommendations 82
Suggestions for further studies 83
References 85
Appendix 87
LIST OF TABLES
Table
1: Distribution of respondents by
gender,
religion, parents’ highest
educational
qualification, family size and
parents’
employment type 54
Table
2: Means and rank order of responses
on
influence of family background on
academic performance of secondary
school
students 57
Table
3: means, standard deviation and
t-test
analysis of the influence of family
background
on academic performance of secondary
school students based on gender 61
Table
4: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
results of the
respondents’ on the factors
influencing
family background on academic
performance
of secondary school students on the
basis
religion 62
Table
5: ANOVA results comparing responses
on
influences of family background on
academic
performance of secondary school
students on
the basis of parental highest
educational
qualification 64
Table
6: Mean standard deviation and t-value
of
respondents’ expression on influence
of
family background on academics
performance
of secondary school students on the
basis
of family size 65
Table
7: ANOVA results comparing responses
on
influence of family background on
academic
performance of secondary school
students
on the basis of parents employment
type 66
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the study
The
singular purpose of education is to produce a useful citizen; a citizen that is
useful both to himself and the society in which he lives, and generally, to the
world community. It is often very difficult to give a universally definition of
education. Nevertheless it is possible to define education from three
perspectives vis-à-vis: from philosophical, sociological and psychological.
From philosophical perspective, education can be defined as a process of
initiating the individuals into a worthwhile activity to the succeeding
generations. Such worthwhile activities include desirable skills, attitude and
value. In sociological perspective, education can be defined as a process by
which the individuals are trained in the norms and value of the society through
socialization. Also from the psychological perspective, education refers to the
modification of behaviour of the learners in a controlled environment.
According
to Etzioni (1984), educational institution can be defined as social unit that
pursue specific goals which they are structured or organised to serve. The
school as a social system and device means of evaluating its students to
findout how far the school is achieving its goals. This related to the students
cognitive development to determine what quality and quantity of learning has
taken place in the learners, the moral standards and psychomotor development of
students.
Family
is a unit made up of the father, mother and children. This pattern is known and
nuclear family. On the other hand we have the extended family or kin-group
mostly found in Nigeria, India, and other West African countries. Family
background arising from marriage institution which is found in variety forms
such as monogamy, polygamy and polyandry. The role of the family in the
socialization of the child is in the area of moral training, intellectual
training, character training, love for others and vocational training.
The
future of any society lies in its ability to train and socialize its young
ones. The stability of its institution and political ways, this productivity of
its industrial resources and the creativity of its intellectual talents reflect
the degree of success of the adults in the society who have been given the
responsibility for making good progress and developing its youths. These
factors influence a child’s learning ability i.e. school environment home
condition, peer groups and culture in the society. The two major socializing institution
of the society are: - the family and the school it has been observed by
(Daramola 2006) that throughout the world, there is no where that unequal
access to essential facilities does not exist among people. These inequalities
are recorded in all spheres of life, it could be found in education, health and
other sectors with its attendant effects on social strata.
(Stevenson,
David and Baker 1987) in a study on family school relation and the child’s
school performance where they used a nationally representative sample or
American households, they examine the relation between parental involvement in
schooling and the child’s school performance. With a sample of 179 children,
parents and teachers, they investigated three hypotheses. The result shows that
the higher the educational status of the mother the greater the degree of
parental involvement in school activities. The younger the age of the child the
greater the degree of parental involvement and the children of parents who are
more involved in school activities do better in school than children with parents
who are more involved in school activities do better in school than children
with parents who are less involved. In an analysis of cross sectional data, they
discovered support for the three hypotheses. The educational status of the
mother is related to the degree of parental involvement in schooling, so that
parents with more education are more involved, parental involvement is related
to the child’s school performance. Also parents are more involved in school
activities if the child is younger. The mother’s educational level and the age
of the child are stronger predictors of parental involvement in schooling for
boys than for girls. They do not, however, find a direct effect of maternal
educational status on school performance independent of parental involvement in
school activities; they discuss these findings in light of the relation between
families and schools.
The
social development of children in modern societies increasingly occurs within
an institutional context. Day care, preschool, and regular school are an
important part of a tymeal child’s environment from infancy to late
adolescence. Schools are environments that establish a series of developmental
tasks for children. The nature of these tasks varies: schools present children with
a set of new interpersonal relationships that they must incorporate into their
social world: schools demand cognitive performances; and schools demand the
socialization of the child to the student role (Lefton 1994) obsolete Youniss
and Smollar, 1985). In all of these developmental tasks, the family is an
important resource for the child. The social development of the child can be
viewed as a project of the child’s parents, and the educational institution
(Litwak obsolete and Meyer, 1999).
Research
on the relation between families and schools has tended to focus on creating an
effective in-home learning environment for the child. The tendency of this line
of research has been to examine familiar characteristics that may influence the
child’s cognitive development and subsequent school performance (Scott-Jones,
1984). Another literature identifies how parents instill motivation and
positive attitudes in their children and the subsequent effects such
characteristics have on school performance (Bloom 1981). While these research traditions
have focused on the development of the child’s cognitive skills and motivation
they have been less concerned with the study of parental involvement in school
activities.
To
effectively assist their child in his or her efforts to meet the demands of
school, parents need to have knowledge about their child’s schooling and access
to resources to help their child.
(Coleman
1997) proposes that family influence can be separated into components such as
economic, human, and social capital, Economic capital refers to the financial
resources human capital provides parents with the knowledge resources necessary
to create supportive learning environments for their children. In contrast,
family social capital is defined by the relationships that develop between
family members. It is through these relationships that children gain access to
the economic, human, and cultural resources of their families. Similarly,
(Pierre 1998) suggests social status and ethnic/racial group have differing
degrees of access to those forms of cultural capital that support academic
success. Within social groups, parents provide experiences that result in
children developing similar tastes, preferences. Eventually, these attributes
are related to social status and ethnic/racial group differences in academic
and occupational outcomes. A number of theories have been developed to examine
those parent-child interactions that provide children with differential access
to family resources.
Steinberg’s
family model. In a set of investigating, proposes that in understanding
family influences, it is important to disentangle three different aspects of
parenting. These include parenting style, which provide the emotional context
in which parent- child interacting occur. The goals that parents establish for
their children; and the practical adopted by parents to help children attain
those goals. It has been shown, for example, that a parenting style defined as
authoritative is related to positive academic achievement (Darling and Stenberg
1993). Such a style creates a context in which parents encourage their children’s
independence and individuality, provide opportunities for children to be
involved in family decision making, expect high standards for their children,
and have warm relationships with their children. (Redding 1999) indicates that
in relation too academics outcomes, the potential limitations associated with
poor economic circumstances can be overcomes by parents who provide stimulating,
supportive, and language rich experiences for their children. It is important,
however, to recognise the nature of the interrelationships between family
background characteristics and more refined family Influences. In the
development of a model of human development, for example, Stephen J. Cerci and his
colleagues (1997) propose that the efficacy of a family Influence for academic
success is determined to a large degree by a child’s family background. They observe that parent-child interactions
are the focus that leads to academic performance. In addition, they claim that
academic success is achieved only if family background resources can be
accessed to maximize the association between family Influences and outcomes
relationships between family Influences and academic achievement need to take
into account the potentially constraining or expanding or expanding
opportunities provided by children’s family backgrounds. Analyses of the
relations between families and academic achievement also need to consider
children’s family structure. A mother does homework with her children. It is
generally acknowledge that family environment is the most powerful influence in
determining a child’s academic motivation and achievement. Research suggests
that differences in the academic achievement of children from single-and
two-parent families can be related to changes in the economic circumstances of
families and to variations in the quality of parent- child interactions in the different
family structure.
Sibling
structure. There has been along standing fascination with exploring associations
between sibling variables, such as the number of children in a family and a
child’s birth- order position in the family, typically these sibling variables
have small but significant inverse associations with academic outcomes,
especially verbal measures of achievement. A number of theoretical perspectives
have been proposed to explain these relationships including the resources dilution
hypothesis and the confluence model.
The
resources dilution hypothesis proposes that sibling variables are related to
the quality and quantity of parent-child interacting in families, and that such
variation in parent resource are associated with sibling difference in academic
achievement. That is, the greater the number of children in a family or the
later the birth- under position, the more those children has to share family resources.
As a result, children have lower score on those academic outcomes affected by
the diluted family influences. An alternate perspective is the confluence model
which proposes that children’s academic development is affected by the number
of children in the families, the age-spacing among children and whether
children are only, first, or last born in families. The model claims, for examples
that with short birth intervals between children, increasing birth order have
related to lower academics performance in contrast, with sufficiently large
intervals, the birth- order pattern may be instigated or even reversed.
Generally,
sibling research suggests that relationships between sibling structure
variables and children’s academics performance can be attributed to differences
in family background, variation in family economics resources, and variations
in the quality of parent-child interactions.
Programme
international students Assessment (PISA 2000) stated that influence of
academics and education success of students and school work which reinforce the
activities and functioning of the teachers and students, the quality of parents
and home background of students goes a long way to predict the quality and
regularity of the satisfaction and provision academics needs. Poor parental
care with gross deprivation of social and economics need of a child suffers
parental and mental deprivation and care due to divorce or death or abscarding
of one of the parents, the child’s schooling may be affected as the financially
buoyant to pay school fee, purchase books and uniforms. Such student might play
truancy and the performance in the school may be adversely affected.
Musgrave
(2005) stated children from broken homes tend to have in contrast to the norms
of the society. The incidence to broken home greatly tells on student’s
academics performance. According to Ortese (2006) a child from homes where the
father and mother are present will be well taken are of and sociable in the
best way possible. Children from single- parent home are likely to suffer
deprivation and denial of some right and opportunities. Also children whose
parents cannot afford to provide them their needs often enter into delinquent
activities. The economics distress may also compel students to result crime in
order to make ends meet. It has been reviewed that the success of children may
depend on the economic resources and equivalent service that parents provide
and predicted that children period in a two-parent family (Biological or step
family) may have the highest attainments. Single- parent families are likely to
yield less income from work and have less time for the provision of honest hood
service and educational materials.
It
is apparent that family environment has been recognised on the student’s
academics performance through the ages, the family value have long been
regarded as fundamental source of morality and decent conduct of much that
warrant measure against any behaviour that violated them. The family is the
institutions where the existence of society is brought into focus.
Statement of the problem
Since secondary school students come
from different families, they are sure to have different family background and
experiences including academics and social life experiences. This makes it
necessary for the researcher to investigate the different family background as
influenced by multifarious socio-economic state such as educational level of
parents, the types of employment, number of children in the family, types of
family-monogamy or polygamy, how regular parents supervise their children’s with
regards to emotional dispositions and temperamental traits, educational gadgets
available in the family.
Family
is a mechanism of socialization in all human cultures. Daramola (2006) status
that the family plays the most significant role in the development of children.
Success of children may depend on the economic resources and predicted that
children who spend most of their childhood period in a two-parent family
(biological) will have the highest attainment. Essien (2001) did a study on the
effects of broken homes on a child academic performance. Azodo (2002)
researched on comparative achievement of students from monogamous and
polygamous families in Ilorin metropolis.
Alawode
and Salami (2000) stated the influence of single parenting on the academic
performance of adolescents in secondary schools while other researcher like
Sokan and Akinode (2001) and Agbo (2002) found that children from single parent
homes exhibited lower self-esteem lower academic performance than those from
two parent homes. However, despite this finings, much of the findings only focus
on the concern variables without actually investigating how he affects students
studying within metropolitan areas. These researches in adequacies justify the need
for the current study which found out the variability of secondary school
students academic performances on the base of family background variables.
Research Questions
The
following research questions are raised and answered in the study.
1.
To
what extent does family background influence academic performance of secondary
school students?
2.
Is
there difference in the influence of family background on academic performance
of students based on ender?
3.
Is
there difference in the influence of family background on academic performance
of students based on religion?
4.
Is
there difference in the influence of family of students based on parent’s highest
qualification?
5.
Is
there difference in the influence of family background on academic performance
of students based on family size?
6.
Is
there difference in the influence of family background on academic performance
of students based on parent’s employment type?
Research Hypotheses
The
following null hypotheses are formulated for this study.
1.
There
is no significant difference in the influence of family background on academic
performance of secondary school students on the basis of gender.
2.
There
is no significant difference in the influence of family background on academic
performance of secondary school students on the basis of religion.
3.
There
is no significant difference in the influence of family background on academic
performance of secondary school students on the basis of parent’s highest
qualification.
4.
There
is no significant difference in the influence of family background on academic
performance of secondary school students on the basis of family size.
5.
There
is no significant difference in the influence of family background on academic
performance of secondary school students in the basis of parents employment
type.
Purpose of the study
The main purpose of study is to
examine the influence of family background school students in Ilorin South
Local Government Area, Kwara state. (A Case Study of Okaka District) to achieve
are set out as following specific objectives are set out as following.
Examine
the socio-economic and academic status of the secondary school students in the
selected school in Okaka district, group the families of the sampled secondary
school students into children from rich homes, poor homes and broken homes an
the basis of the economic, social, academic and material status of their
parents.
Using the performances of the sample
students in the last two sessions, to determine the relationship between the
home environment type and the academic performance of the children.
Draw
inferences from the result and make suitable recommendation to enhance academic
performance in the study area.
Significance of the study
Students perform differently in their
class work and other intellectual activities even though they exposed to the
sane teaching experience. These individual differences teaching experience,
these individual differences of students are supposed to be caused not only by
hereditary/inborn factors but also by other factors. This study hopes to look
at one of these factors which are the home background and its effect on the
academic performance of students. This research study will be of tremendous
help to mothers, class teachers and school administrators.
The study will also assist to improve
child care by mothers to know the importance of child students’ proper
upbringing in relation to academic performance. The research study shows that
students from rich homes educated homes who have opportunity to improve on
their academic performances perform better than students from poor homes
uneducated homes and who have no opportunity to improve on their own. The class
teacher will be able to know how to compensate for those individual differences
and also the administrators would know how to assist students who come from
poor home probably by providing some of the basic facilities for their
education.
Scope of the Study
The
study is limited to Ilorin South Local Government Education Authority. Thus the
generalization of the finding may be limited to Okaka District.
To
generalize the findings in the whole state results have to be obtained from
other Local Government Education Authority in Kwara State. This is not possible
in this study due to the time and financial constraints.
However,
this is not to say that the outcome of the study does not have the same
implications for educational practices.
Operational definition of terms
The
following terms are defined as used in the study.
Family background: The home environment of a child.
Student: - A person that is learning in the
school.
Academic performance: - The outcome of a learning experience
which is determined through test.
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