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ABSTRACT
The study examined the home and school environment as determinants of academic achievement of public primary school pupils in English Language in Ankpa Education Zone, Kogi State. The study adopted correlational design in which 3 research questions were posed and 3 null hypotheses tested. The population of the study comprised all primary 4 pupils in public Primary Schools in the study area. Simple random sampling and stratified random sampling were used in selecting 120 respondents for the study. An instrument titled Home and school environmental factors with 15 questionnaire items each and third Examination academic record on English Language. The 30 items were trial tested on a sample of 30 pupils from different schools other than the area of study. The data obtained were computed using cronbach Alpha method. This gave over all scores of 0.92.The three research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation, while t-test statistics were used to test the three null hypotheses of 0.05 level of significance. An overview of the overall results showed that, home and school environments to a low extent influence pupils’ academic achievement in English Language. Considering the results of the study, the researcher recommends that home and school environment should take sole responsibilities of sharpening the pupils’ characters and experience.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The word “home” can be described as the house or flat/apartment that one lives in, especially with one’s family. In another context, it is used to refer to one’s town, district, country where one lives and regards as one’s own. Home is a social unit made up of father, mother, children and relatives (Evans, 2006). Home environment refers to the surroundings which the child finds himself after being born, which he or she interacts with (Farrant, 2005). For this study, home-environment is a most powerful informal learning situation in which the families, especially parents, act as educators. In the home, parents socialize their children into the norms and culture of the home and general society through their interactions with the children. On this note, Bloom (1984) demonstrates that, “it is what parents do in the homes that count for learning development of children”. The author went further to say that, lack of encouragement, low quality of parents’ language and lack of stimulating activities in the home will reduce the home’s effectiveness as a learning environment. The child’s home environment can also be said to consist of the physical items and materials within the home that are capable of making or marring the child’s achievement in school, such items and materials which a child can see, feel or touch, like the nature of buildings, furniture, electronics, spaces, toys and other play materials. Psychological state of the home such as emotions feelings and thinking that come to the child whenever he or she remembers home, interactions and discipline available in the home. And social state which comprises of the child’s interaction with parents, siblings, peers, relatives and other adults in the child’s home environment.
There are different types of home such as nuclear home which comprises of one father, mother and their children; extended home which is made up of parents, grand-parents, children, uncles, aunties, nephews and nieces and; polygamous home which comprises of one father, two or more mothers and children. There is also single or lone parent home which is made up of either the father or mother and children as a result of death, or divorce. (Hornby,2010). This study will focus on nuclear and polygamous homes. This is because the study area is predominantly occupied by Muslims and few Christians who believe in “one man, two or more (four) wives” and “one man one wife” modes of marriage respectively. These two forms of home present different home environments to the child and this could influence the child’s overall development and education achievement in particular. This is because the home environment accommodates a variety of information with which a child can interact and prepare him/herself for later development in life before he or she steps into the school environment.
For all children, the interior of the home and its immediate surroundings are the first environments they experience in their early childhood. Young children spend majority of their time in the home. Home environment refers to the surroundings which the child finds him/herself after being born. It can be a good and clean, or filthy and chaotic environment. It also implies any and every influence with which an individual comes into contact after the hereditary pattern has been received through the plasma (Oladele, 2004).Home environments have been shown to be major factors as physical, social and psychological that influences the overall behavior. Within the home environment, children have their early interactions with members of their family and the availability and quality of resources for learning and playing largely determine the nature of these interactions. Availability of stimulating objects, books and play materials within the home are critical indicators for the overall quality of the home environment. Parent’s socio-economic status such as parental occupation, level of education, parental income and family size are also among the factors in the home environment that could determine the school readiness and academic achievement of the child (Evance, 2005). In the past, research on the physical environment of homes and communities primarily focused on environmental hazards, environmental stress and impacts of poverty. Recently, there has been an increasing interest among researchers on the quality of home environments and their impact on child development (Harris, and Evans, 2005).
Within the study area, most parents are predominantly peasant farmers and petty traders. This, coupled with the practice of one man, two or more wives has made the families coping strength to be low and lessen interest in the education of their children. These children lack stimulating learning materials in their various homes and cannot find any relatedness to what they have in the home to what is obtainable in their various schools. When a child lacks the sense of relatedness, the child will find it difficult to cope with learning tasks since these children are mostly at their concrete operational stage of development mostly characterized by “hands-on” thinking (Piaget, 1954),where children learn by recognizing logical stability of the physical world (Woolfork, 2011). As a result, elements in the environment may contribute to a large extent to children’s poor academic achievement. Such factors as poor feeding little sleep and unhygienic domestic conditions may have negative effects on the child’s health which may result in a lowering of his capacity to learn. This may rob him of a background and general knowledge which is accepted as self-evident by most schools (Downie, 2000). When a child comes from a “good” home where the parent provides adequately for the needs of their family and where there is adequate opportunity for intellectual interests, the foundations are firmly laid by the time the child goes to school.
However, in the case of the impoverished child, the father and mother may not, as a result of deficient finances, have the opportunity or the desire to stimulate the child intellectually; his vocabulary could be limited, inaccurate or wrongly pronounced. The emotional atmosphere in the home may exercise a great influence on the child. If there is a cold care-less attitude, irregularity and evasion of discipline, the child may display such undesirable characteristics as dishonesty, aggression and a lack of punctuality to school. The quarrels, dissatisfaction and instability of the home atmosphere may disturb his or her emotional equilibrium and he or she may become demoralized. Parental antagonism towards the school may also influence the child so that he also adopts these attitudes in imitation of his parents (Downie, 2000). According to Bell(2005), a large part of a person’s intelligence can be ascribed to accumulation of experience and knowledge. Development in childhood thus forms the basis for the child’s later intelligence. Bell also states that it is therefore imperative that the child must receive good and adequate food, be protected against illness, be intellectually stimulated and be well-adjusted so as to be able to cope with learning and other physical and psychological challenges within the school environment.
Researchers have found evidence for associations among various aspects of the school environment and children’s achievement scores (Brookover ,2000) However, controversy remains over whether these associations reflect true relationships between school environment and achievement. School environment focuses on the school’s physical, social, academic and administrative aspects in terms of the building design, size of the classroom and the infrastructure, including library facilities, staffroom, toilet, school compound, playground, computer room, clubs, leadership style, teacher-pupil relationship, teaching and learning materials and methods of teaching. These are variables that affect pupils’ academic achievement through their direct or indirect interaction with them (Ajayi, 2001). School environment also includes instructional space planning and accessories planning. The classroom interaction between pupils and teachers are essential in the teaching and learning process. A school’s social-cultural context like the club, leadership style and peers are other important components of the learning environment that influence the pupils’ achievement (Allen, 2009).
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