THE NEGATIVE EFFECT OF INSECURITY AS IT AFFECT THE EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOUR OF OUR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS. A CASE STUDY OF SOME SELECTED SCHOOLS IN PAIKORO LGA OF NIGER STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1.      Background to the Study

Education is more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is one of the most important investments a country can make in its people and its future. Education is also critical to reducing poverty and inequality by equipping students with critical skills and tools to help them better provide for themselves. According to the Value of Education report (2014): a new global consumer research study commissioned by HSBC, more than half (58%) of parents say that paying for a child’s education is the best investment anyone can make and that a good education should help their children to become independent and build a worthwhile career. In other words, education is an important enabler in a competitive and increasingly globalized employment marketplace.

Academic achievement or academic performance is the outcome of education, that is, the extent to which a student has achieved their educational goals. 80% of parents say that paying for a child’s education is the best investment anyone can make and that a good education should help their children to become independent and build a worthwhile career. In other words, education is an important enabler in a competitive and increasingly globalized employment marketplace.

Academic achievement or academic performance is the outcome of education, that is, the extent to which a student has achieved their educational goals. Academic achievement is commonly measured by examinations or continuous assessment. Attaining a high level of academic performance is what every parent or guardian as well as teacher wishes for their children, wards and students respectively. Schools and teachers are generally graded qualitatively based on the academic performance of their students. 

Few problems in Nigerian education today rival that of bridging the gap between students who are academically successful and students who are falling behind. Many theories exist on how to effectively educate all our students and to bridge the gap between those who are flourishing and those who are failing. At the center of this problem is the persistent academic underachievement of students especially at the West African Senior Secondary School Examinations (WASSCE) and the National Examinations Council (NECO) Examinations. Academic success at school obviously requires students to meet a certain minimum standard of academic performance with the focus being on standardized measures of academic or cognitive abilities. However, there has been a recent movement to evaluate the non-cognitive factors specific to achievement (Sellers, Chavous & Cooke, 1998)

The 21st century has brought a new view of the more diverse reality of human functioning and we are slowly but surely becoming aware of the need for schools and the society to address the emotional and social aspects of education. Increasingly, researchers'' attention has turned towards the complex role that non-cognitive skills play in facilitating educational achievement (Heckman et al., 2006; Cunha & Heckman, 2007; Borghans & Weel, 2008; Leininger & Kalil, 2008).

We educate students with one main objective in mind: their success. What then is the measure of success? Is it only a strong scientific mind and nothing else? A century of research on general intelligence and cognitive performance has overshadowed the role that other non-cognitive factors may play in academic achievement. There is a consensus among educators that cognitive factors, like grades or scores on intelligence tests, predict student performance. However, many students still fail to live up to their true potential despite their IQ or previous academic performance. Conversely, some students with mediocre grades have managed to complete a college or university education. Both of these examples suggest that other factors, specifically non-cognitive factors may be at work. One of psychology’s open secrets is the relative inability of grades, IQ or examination scores, despite their popular mystique, to predict unerringly who will succeed in life (Goleman, 1996)

With the gathering interest in the non-cognitive (affective) aspects of students’ learning arose the need to study the varied psychological constructs that underpin students learning. Each student presents to the classroom with a unique personality and set of capabilities otherwise known as individual differences; this is because no child has been raised in a vacuum. Students are a product of the primary environment in which they grow and live in, which is chiefly the home. Children''s semi-structured home learning environment transitions into a more structured learning environment when children start school. An awareness of how these psychological constructs impact students’ participation in the learning process and how these constructs help students if at all, achieve their educational goals is pertinent if educators keen about helping students improve academic performance and ultimately attain educational objectives. 

Emotional Intelligence is one of such constructs. Simply put, Emotional Intelligence refers to a person’s ability to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions and manage them. Emotional intelligence (EI) as a construct is relatively new (Mayer & Salovey, 1990).

It has often been said that obtaining a good education is the key to being successful in the world.  But what determines being successful while in school?  While many things may contribute to school achievement, one psychological variable that is often overlooked is locus of control. Locus of control is one of the personality constructs that has attracted many researchers because this construct, particularly among students, is an important element in determining future behavior (in the case of the present study, academic achievement). Locus of control is meaningfully related to several variables associated with academic achievement (Bernstein, Stephan, & Davis, 1979; Dollinger, 2000). In the context of education, locus of control typically refers to how students perceive the causes of their academic success or failure in school. If someone believes that his or her successes and failures are due to factors within their own control, such as effort or ability, then that person is said to have an internal locus of control.  On the other hand, if someone believes that his or her successes and failures are due to factors outside of their own control, such as fate or luck, then that person is said to have an external locus of control.  Students with an “internal locus of control” generally believe that their success or failure is a result of the effort and hard work they invest in their education. Students with an “external locus of control” generally believe that their successes or failures result from external factors beyond their control, such as luck, fate, circumstance, injustice, bias, or teachers who are unfair, prejudiced, or unskilled.

Whether a student has an internal or external locus of control is thought to have a powerful effect on academic motivation, persistence, and achievement in school. In education, “internals” are considered more likely to work hard in order to learn, progress, and succeed, while “externals” are more likely to believe that working hard is “pointless” because someone or something else is treating them unfairly or holding them back. Students with an external locus of control may also believe that their accomplishments will not be acknowledged or their effort will not result in success. Internals have been found to not only regulate themselves (self-regulation); they can also reinforce themselves (self-reinforcement) and motivate themselves (self-motivation). A student’s internality or externality therefore has a profound impact on his/her academic achievement

1.2. Conceptual/Theoretical Framework

Theoretical framework reviews and discusses some theories that are related to and form the framework for this study. In this context, the following theories were specified to support the research topic and methods used:

1.2.1. Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner, an American developmental psychologist questioned the idea that intelligence is a single entity, that it results from a single factor and that it can be measured simply via IQ tests. According to him, traditional types of intelligence, such as IQ, fail to fully explain cognitive ability. Bringing forward evidence to show that at any one time a child may be at very different stages for example, in number development and spatial/visual maturation respectively, Howard Gardner has successfully undermined the idea that knowledge at any one particular developmental stage hangs together in a structured whole.

The theory of multiple intelligences states that we are able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences; the so-called profile of intelligences and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems and progress in various domains. (Gardner, 1983)

To provide a sound theoretical foundation for his claims, Gardner set up certain basic "tests" that each intelligence had to meet to be considered a full-fledged intelligence and not simply a talent, skill, or aptitude. The criteria he used include the following eight factors:

·         Potential isolation by brain damage

·         The existence of savants, prodigies, and other exceptional individuals

·         A distinctive developmental history and a definable set of expert "end-state" performances

·         An evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility

·         Support from psychometric findings

·         Support from experimental psychological tasks

·         An identifiable core operation or set of operations

·         Susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system

Based on the above criteria, Gardner came up with the following seven intelligence modalities which he later revised to nine with the inclusion of naturalistic and existential intelligence.

·         Verbal-linguistic intelligence (well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words)

·         Logical-mathematical intelligence (ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns)

·         Spatial-visual intelligence (capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly)

·         Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully)

·         Musical intelligences (ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber)

·         Interpersonal intelligence (capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others)

·         Intrapersonal (capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes)

·         Naturalist intelligence (ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature)

·         Existential intelligence (sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, what is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?

Although the distinction between intelligences has been set out in great detail, Gardner opposes the idea of labeling learners to a specific intelligence. Each individual possesses a unique blend of all the intelligences.

1.2.2. Key Points in Multiple Intelligences Theory

Beyond the descriptions of the eight intelligences and their theoretical underpinnings, certain points of the Multiple Intelligences model are important to remember:

·         Each person possesses all eight intelligences: Multiple Intelligences theory is not a "type theory" for determining the one intelligence that fits. It is a theory of cognitive functioning, and it proposes that each person has capacities in all eight intelligences with the eight intelligences functioning together in ways unique to each person. Some people appear to possess extremely high levels of functioning in all or most of the eight intelligences. For example, German poet-statesman-scientist-naturalist-philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Other people, such as certain severely impaired individuals in institutions for the developmentally disabled, appear to lack all but the most rudimentary aspects of the intelligences. Most of us fall somewhere in between these two extremes—being highly developed in some intelligences, modestly developed in others, and relatively underdeveloped in the rest.

·         Most people can develop each intelligence to an adequate level of competency: Although individuals may bewail their deficiencies in a given area and consider their problems innate and intractable, Howard Gardner suggests that virtually everyone has the capacity to develop all eight intelligences to a reasonably high level of performance if given the appropriate encouragement, enrichment, and instruction.

·         Intelligences usually work together in complex ways: Gardner points out that each intelligence as described above is actually a "fiction"; that is, no intelligence exists by itself in life (except perhaps in very rare instances in savants and brain-injured individuals). Intelligences are always interacting with each other. For example, when a child plays a game of football, he needs bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (to run, kick, and catch), spatial intelligence (to orient himself to the playing field and to anticipate the trajectories of flying balls), and linguistic and interpersonal intelligences (to successfully argue a point during a dispute in the game)

·         There are many ways to be intelligent within each category: There is no standard set of attributes that one must have to be considered intelligent in a specific area. Consequently, a person may not be able to read, yet be highly linguistic because he can tell a terrific story or has a large oral vocabulary. Similarly, a child may be quite awkward on the playing field, yet possess superior bodily-kinesthetic intelligence when she weaves a carpet. Multiple Intelligences theory emphasizes the rich diversity of ways in which people show their gifts within intelligences as well as between intelligences.

1.2.3. Multiple Intelligences: Precursor of Emotional Intelligence

The fundamental propositions of multiple intelligences theory are shared by many researchers who have long concluded that academic intelligence (IQ), more fluid intelligences (emotional intelligence) and non-intelligence factors (e.g. interests, personality) are all relevant to both academic and work performance. Very often, an IQ score tells us very little about an individual’s personality hence the need to assess other areas of intelligence. 

Emotional Intelligence as a concept builds on Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. Emotional intelligence develops and advances what Gardner calls the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences. Under emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-regulation are related to intrapersonal intelligence while empathy and social skill are related to interpersonal intelligence.

1.2.4. Social Learning theory

Social learning theory was primarily founded by Rotter and emphasizes the role of reinforcement, reward or gratification as an important event in the acquisition and performance of skills and knowledge.

An event may be perceived by some individuals as a reinforcement, while others may regard it differently and because of this variation in the perception of the individuals, creation of various reactions by them to an event is inevitable (Rotter, 1966). One of the determinants of the reactions of an individual is whether or not he or she perceives the reinforcement to be contingent upon his or her own behavior.

Social learning theory tries to develop a framework for human behaviour in complex social situations and in some ways may be considered as an attempt to integrate two different kinds of learning theories: reinforcement or ‘S-R’ theories and cognitive or ‘field’ theories (Rotter, Chance & Phares, 1972; Bandura, 1977). In other words, social learning theory attempts to provide a general theoretical background for the concept of reinforcement and its effects on behaviour in social situations.

1.2.5. Some important principles of social learning theory

·         In the study of human personality, the unit of investigation is the interaction of the individual with his or her meaningful environment. A large amount of human social behaviour is based on learned or modifiable behaviour.