CHAPTER ONE
Background of the Study
The academic performance of any
student cannot be separated from the home environment in which the child lives,
healthy home environment offers emotional security to a child. Education has
one of its basic task as to train young people to become useful members of the
society. This training begins at home in the informal way. The home of the
child is the first place he enters as he is born into the world by his or her
parents.
Children are motivated to work on activities and learn new
information and skills when their environments are rich in interesting
activities that arouse their curiosity and offer moderate challenges. The same
can be said about home environment , unfortunately there is much variability in
motivational influences in homes, some homes have many activities that
stimulate children thinking as well as computer, books, puzzles and parents who
may be heavily interested in their children cognitive development and spent
time with them on learning. Much of the
variability in the relation between family income and children’s intellectual
development comes from the family provision of a stimulating home environment
(Young, Linver & Brooks, 2002).
Children intellectual development is most strongly influenced by the
home environment during infancy and early childhood. When they are under the
direct influence of parents. As children mature, schools and peers also begin
to play a role in their intellectual socialization. There is much evidence
supporting the hypothesis that the quality of a child’s early learning in the
home environment relate positively to the development of intelligent and
reading skills, (Meece, 2002, Sene Chai & Lefevre 2002), and parental
involvement in schooling also predict achievement (Luckner, Whaley &
Egeland, 2004).
Various homes
factors have been shown to be important, mother’s responsiveness, discipline
style and involvement with the child, organization of the environment,
availability appropriate of learning
materials, opportunities for daily stimulation. Parents, who provide a warm,
responsive and supporting environment, encourage exploration, stimulate
curiosity and provide play and learning materials accelerate their children’s
intellectual development (Meece,
2006). Which on the long run increases academic performance?
Within
the home environment we must examine both the roles of mothers and fathers
because differentiate parent behaviour has often been implicated as a variable
affecting children’s development. Some of the potential parental behaviour that
can influence children motivational beliefs are:
·
Attributions for the child’s school
performance
·
Perception of the task difficulty of school
work
·
Value for school work
·
Expectation and confidence in children’s
abilities
The home environment provide the
foundation for learning and is an element of the student life that can affect
grades. Providing opportunities to learn outside the school help facilitate
student success in the school environment, as reported by the university of
Minnesota extension. According to experts the mother’s educational level had
the single most important impact on a young child’s academic performance. The
school cannot single handedly provide the continuation of the home environment,
but the can play estimate role in laying foundation of the child in learning
how to read and write however, this influence is characterized by various
factors such as the parents educational attainment and cultural issues. Over
the years the society recorded a persisted increase in the poor performance in
the various school examination such as the senior school exam (S.S.C.E)
comments from educator have shown that the blame for poor performance has been
as a result of neglect and care free attitude toward academic work by students
and parents. It is against this background that researcher has decided to
investigate academic performance on child. There are innumerable factors that
affect the child academic performance as stated above. It is obvious that a
child academic performance is directly related to his or her environment as
well as learning facilities and socio cultural issues. Every child is born with
certain level of intellectual ability and capability but a good conducive
environment with adequate learning facility will help boost intellectual and
academic capability of the child. Parent from good learned environment will;
always have good attitude toward education any provide learning materials such
as the television, instructive videos, books and toys (creative toys) etc that
facilitate the learning process if they are provided.Educated parents will
always believe that it is important to help a child with his or her home work
and revise the school work that the child had done but this is the opposite if
a child is from a poor home environment to a large extent he or she is deprived
of the opportunities and he or she struggle with the teaching and learning
process.
Statement of Problem
Good education does not happen by chance. It
is a product of effective teaching and learning coupled with the effort of the
teacher, the school, the students, parents and their various home environments.
Often at times the blames on the poor performance of students in school are
shifted to the teachers and the school authorities.
Most
families in our society seem not to give adequate attention to the education of
their children. It appears some of the parents have erroneous notion about the
performance of their children, they do not know and seem to fulfill their role
of guidance and encouragement in the child’s performance in schools. Some
people also have the notion that the mass failure or success in schools could
be traced back to the teachers and the school authorities. While other people
see socio-economic status of the family as an influence to the child’s academic
performance.
However,
some research works have revealed that the performance of the students is a
joint effort of both the school authorities and that of the parents in
different home environment.
This
calls for further research to find out the causes of the poor performance of
the students and then proffer solution to that. In Edo state for instance, some
students and parents have the notion that the factors responsible for the
re-occurrence massive failure of student in junior and senior West African
School Certificate Examinations (WASCE) is the factor emanating from the school
authorities and the teachers alone. Some students even go to special Centre’s
while few enlightened parents maintained that there are some factors in
student’s home environment which also contribute to that. It is on this premise
that this study was set out to identify some of the home environmental factor
affecting the students’ academic performances and proffer solution to that.
Research Questions
As regard to the purpose of
research the blowing research question provide the forms or the study:
1. To what
extent does parental involvement influence the secondary school students
academic performance? 2. To what extent does parent’s occupation affect the
secondary school students academic performance? 3. Does the type of family
structure and family situations influence the secondary school students’
academic performance?4. To what extent does parental educational status
influences secondary school students academic performance?Purpose of The StudyThe purpose
of this study is to examine the HOME ENVIRONMENT AND ITS EFFECT ON ACADEMIC
PERFORMANCE AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS of Egor local government.
Significant of the Study
This study will help contribute
to the existing knowledge already on ground concerning the home environment and
academic achievement in secondary school student of egor local government area.
The findings of the investigation will help the various authorities as
teachers, parents and caregivers in adopting method or technique in child
rearing as well as teaching so as to bridge the gap of variation in academic
Performance and how to organize students in such a way that they are all
carried along academically no mater his or her family condition.
Delimitation/Scope of The Study
The
study was design specifically to investigate the relationship between school
environment ant and the academic achievement among secondary school students in
Egor local government area Edo state. It is restricted to only ten secondary
school within this community.
Definition of Terms
Academic Achievement: Refers to the level of
schooling must successfully complete. Another ability to attain success in
studies. (four dictionary, 2013) for example when you receive great grades,
this is an example of academic achievement, where you after college and
graduate school, with a good result. It should also be the extent to which a
student teacher or institution has achieves their educational goal.
Curriculum: Curriculum is the total Aggregate of
subject or construct, course of study organized and planning by an institution
like a school that is disseminated to the students within a certain time phase
in a usually formal setting
Family: Collins students dictionary defines family
as a social groups consisting of parents and their children it may be broader
than this in some cases and yet may also be more limited to a single parent and
a child/children.
Literacy: traditionally literacy has been defined as
the ability to read and write. However in the past twenty years or so, this
conventional definition of literacy has been challenged and broadened to
include a wide range of complex and multiple dimensional processes and skills.
Family
literature: the term family literacy was coin by Taylor (2003) in her study of the
ways in which the parents impart assist the literacy of their children. This
concept of family literacy should be distinguished from family literacy
programs (e.g.Hannon and Bird, 2004;Was and Hermann,2004)
Family Structure: the composition and membership
of the family and the organization and patterning of relationships among
individual family members.