THE INFLUENCE OF PEER GROUPS ON ADOLESCENTS AND THEIR PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
STUDY BACKGROUND
The educational foundation of a child begins at home. It begins with informal education, which takes place at home, and then the child is sent to school for his final education. At school, the child is exposed to a variety of people, including the teacher, classmates, and the school’s health. All of these people involved in a child’s education have a significant influence on the students.
The students who are mostly his classmates and peer group have a large influence on the child’s academic performance because he spends the majority of his time with them. As a result, the child’s peer group is the first social group outside the home in which he or she attempts to gain acceptance. Each peer group has its own code of conduct, which does not always correspond to the advance standard.
The peer group becomes an enculturation and learning agency. Even very young children develop a sense of self based on their perceptions of important people in their environment, such as relatives, teachers, and peers. Socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and parental occupation all influence how families see themselves and the process by which they socialize their children (Bornstein, 2002).
As children grow older and leave their home environment, their self-perception and social skills are influenced by how their peers perceive them. When children move away from their families and into child care centers, schools, and the larger community, they begin to form attachments and friendships through their play.
These connections influence behavior. Infants and toddlers have been observed touching other infants, crying when others cry, and later offering nurturance or comfort. Early friendship begins to have a more lasting influence on behavior around the age of three (Parke, 1990), and peer influence on behavior gradually becomes more dominant.
Peers are defined by Smart and Smart (2000) as “friends of about the same class members of the same society such as the boys scout, girls, guide, chorister, football team, social clubs.” The influence of peer groups on students’ academic performance is heavily dependent on the students’ abilities and potential.
Derville, B. (2001) observed that as a child grows older, his peers are likely to become more important to him than his parents and teachers. Harris (1998, 2002) and Rowe (1994) claimed that peer groups have a greater influence than parents, but this extreme position has been challenged by other researchers (Berk, 2005).
Children gradually learn that others can share their feelings, attitudes, or guilt in different ways. Other people’s perspectives will influence how children feel about their own families. Children typically have a family perspective on their own and other cultures.
When confronted with opposing viewpoints, they frequently need to reconsider their own. It is often difficult for chuckler to accept the notion that other families can function radically differently than their own while still holding many of the same attitudes and beliefs and being equally nurturing and secure. The peer group acts as a gauge for children as they examine themselves and their feelings about themselves and their families.
Children’s socialization skills are also influenced by their peer group. These early friendships teach children how to negotiate and interact with others, including siblings and other family members. They learn from their peers how to cooperate and socialize in accordance with group norms and sanctioned modes of behavior. The child’s peer group can influence what he or she values, knows, wears, eats, and learns.
The extent of this influence, however, is determined by other contextual factors, such as the age and personality of the group’s children (Harris, 1998, Hartyp, 1983). In its most accepted form, peer groups serve as a healthy coming-of-age arbiter, teaching children negotiating skills and teaching them how to deal with hostility and solve problems in a social context.
The peer group, in its most destructive form, can demand blind obedience to a group norm, resulting in socially alienated gangs with pathological outlooks (Peer, 1987). Despite so much change in today’s society, the fundamental tasks of growing up remain the same: finding a place in a sense of belonging, identifying and mastering tasks that are
generally recognized as having values and thus can earn respect by acquiring skills to cope with them, acquiring a sense of worth as a person, and developing reliable and predictable relationships with others, particularly a few close friends and loved ones. The term “students” is derived from the Latin word “studio,” which means “growing up.” It is a transitional period in which the individual grows from childhood to adulthood.
Wentzel (1989) and Lingrett (1995) discovered that as children grow and enter adulthood, involvement with and influence of peer identification increases while family modeling value decreases. During early childhood, peer tends to replace the modeling value of the family context.
As a result of the social recognition that students seek, they are subjected to a certain amount of pressure that forces them to follow peer convictions or rejections. The impact of social interaction on students’ academic achievement is critical for parents, educators, and policymakers. The influence of a student’s peer group, particularly during adolescence and early adulthood, is a powerful force for both pre-social and anti-social development. Academic performance has also been extensively researched.
Caltern (1998) discovered that there is a strong relationship between school adjustment behavior and peer acceptance. It was also discovered that strong and high-quality peer relationships are associated with poor or good academic performance and successful school transition. Peer influence is one of the most commonly used terms to describe negative peer influence.
It is especially common because students are forced to spend a significant amount of time in fixed groups (school and subgroups within schools) regardless of their feelings about these groups. Furthermore, they lack the maturity to deal with it. Students are also naturally inclined to act negatively toward those who are not members of their peer groups. Students, on the other hand, can have a positive impact.
For example, if one is involved with a group of people who are ambitious and working hard to succeed, one may feel pressured to follow suit in order to avoid feeling excluded from the group.
Positive peer influence on academic performance is dependent on the student’s sense of self-identity, self-esteem, and self-reliance. Peer influence can help students mobilize their energy and motivate them to succeed. Positive role models can and do exist among peers.
Negative behavior that his or her value would normally reject. A student’s academic performance suffers when they are negatively influenced by their peers. Stronger students have an impact on their peers and actually help improve overall academic performance.
For example, if students have friends who are secondary school dropouts, they have a tendency to be absent from school, have lower grades, and have less positive attitudes toward school, they are less popular, and they are less likely to plan to attend higher institutions.
If a dropout keeps in touch with friends who have remained in school, these friends may provide moral support for returning to school. Individuals’ efforts and achievement in school are influenced by their peers’ attitudes and aspirations, as well as peer expectations and standards. For many secondary school students, achieving in school is in direct conflict with peer acceptance.
However, students are most likely to be introduced to problem behaviors such as drinking, smoking, diligence, and poor academic performance through their peer group. Positive peer influence produces more alternative solutions to problems, proposes more mature solutions, and is less aggressive than negative peer influence.
Students are drawn to peer groups because they provide them with sources of information needed to be empowered academically, vocationally, psychologically, or otherwise, as well as feedback on the appropriateness of their emotions, particularly when students are highly stressed or under stressed (Schachter, 1989).
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The impact of one’s peer group on academic achievement is enormous. The mechanisms by which peer influence affects students’ academic performance must be studied and documented. This will help parents and counselors understand the pattern of peer influence and how to limit negative influence.
QUESTIONS FOR RESEARCH
1. Poor teaching methods on the part of the teacher may be encouraged by negative peer group activities.
2. A lack of school materials can cause children to become disinterested in their schoolwork, which can encourage negative peer group behavior and lower academic performance.
3. School indiscipline may encourage negative behavior among members of a peer group, resulting in lower academic performance.
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The goal of this study or research work is to achieve the following goals regarding the academic performance of secondary school students in Egor Local Government Area, Edo State.
1. investigate the concept and nature of peer groups
2. Discuss the difficulties that students face.
3. investigate the methods by which peer groups influence school students
4. Discuss the effects of peer group influence on students’ academic performance.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY
This research is significant for several reasons. To begin, the study will provide the researcher with an in-depth understanding of how the peer group’s activities truly influence. Second, the researcher will raise awareness among teachers and parents about how uncontrolled negativity among peer groups to which their children belong can affect academic performance.
Finally, the study will help to identify areas where peer group activities may have a negative impact on schoolchildren, so that parents and teachers can monitor them.
THE STUDY’S OBJECTIVE
This study focuses on the impact of peer group on academic performance in students. This study focuses on four secondary schools in Edo State’s Egor Local Government Area.
TERMS DEFINITION
For the sake of clarity, the following terms used in the study’s content are defined below.
1. Discussion with peers. This refers to children or adolescents who are the same age or maturity level as each other and have regular contact.
2. Discussion with peers. Peer influence is the pressure that adolescents feel from their peers.
3. Academic accomplishments. This is related to children’s schoolwork in the areas of ability to read and write, ability to speak good English, ability to solve math problems, and ability to use their initiative under any circumstances.
Adolescent is a word that is used to describe adolescent people. This refers to the transitional period between childhood and adulthood. The adolescent years range from 12 to 18 years.
5. It’s time to socialize. This is due to discipline and positive responses to academic work by both teachers and students. Where there is willing submission to constituted, there is adequate room for academic achievement.
Adolescent who is still in school. This refers to adolescents who are still enrolled in school as opposed to those who have dropped out.
7. A person’s social standing. This has to do with the academic and family backgrounds of the parents of the children being studied. It has been observed that children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds perform somewhat better in academic work than those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in terms of ability to speak simple and correct English and to write.
8. Disobeying orders. It is unjustified absence from school caused by a child’s own initiative without parental or school permission. A truant is any child who is absent from school because he finds other activities more appealing than schoolwork. He could be someone who simply does not want to go to school and instead plans to do something else. He wanders away from these difficulties, halting his descent into delinquency.
Truancy is a sociological problem that can lead to juvenile delinquency and, eventually, crime. Students who skip class are generally anxious and highly sensitive in class, and they struggle to interact with other students.
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THE INFLUENCE OF PEER GROUP ON ADOLESCENTS AND THEIR PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL