Attitude of Secondary Schools Students Towards Career Choice in Christian Religious Studies
CHAPTER ONE
Objective of the Study
The purposes of this research study is to examine the level of attitude of secondary schools students toward career choice in Christian Religious Studies in Ibesikpo Asutan Local Government Area. The key variables for realization of this goal are attitude of secondary schools students and career choice in Christian Religious Studies. It intends to specifically:
- Establish the relationship between attitude of Secondary School Students and Career choice in C.R.S.
- To ascertain if the attitude of students themselves toward career choice in Christian religious Studies is gender based.
- To establish the influence of teachers and parents over students toward career choice in C.R.S.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
Young people encounter lot of challenges in the transition from the world of school to that of work, hence the choice of a good career becomes a determining factors towards a child’s bright future. Choosing a career is an extremely important decision that impacts an individual‘s entire future. Career exploration is defined as the extent to which possible careers are researched and considered. Research, Navin (2009) has suggested that exploring career options before committing to a career increases future career success and satisfaction. Thus, variables that influence career exploration in adolescents should be identified and acknowledged.
Career can be defined as the progress and actions taken by a person throughout a lifetime, specially related to that person‘s occupations. A career is often composed of the jobs held, titles earned and work accomplished over a long period of time, rather than just referring to one‘s position (Business Dictionary.com). Dictionary com defines career as an occupation or profession, especially one requiring special training, followed as one‘s lifework. It also defines career as a person‘s progress or general course of action through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking. Career could also be defined as the sum total of life experiences including paid and unpaid work, community, volunteer and family activities. Microsoft Encarta defines career as somebody‘s progress in a chosen profession or during that person‘s working life, or the general path of progress taken by somebody.
Sociologists stress the forces in our society as the major determinants of vocational choice. Some sociologists consider the birth right of the individual as a most significant factor in career choice since it establishes the family, race, nationality, social class, residential district, and to a large extent the educational and cultural opportunities for the person. Sociologists argue that the range of occupations that an individual will consider in choosing a career is determined largely by the status expectations of the social class to which he belong (Friesen, 1981). Similarly, parents strongly influence their children in the choice of a career. In some cases, according to Friesen, children inherit their father‘s occupations (i.e., farmer‘s sons). In others, the children choose an occupation within the range acceptable to parental values, expectations and social class. In addition, educational opportunities clearly influence vocational choice. For example, students who drop out of high school restrict their occupational choices to manual work or in many cases to insecure white collar jobs, or the semi-skilled and unskilled service or clerical occupations. The psychologist, in comparison to the sociologist, is interested in the inner world of the individual and the role personality plays in vocational choice. According to Friesen (1981) the psychologist believes that the career a person chooses is an expression of the personality of life style of the individual. Thus personality theory is particularly important in vocational counselling. Several theories of personality such as psychoanalytic, trait, self and developmental theories will be briefly discussed as follows: Trait theory, Friesen stated attempts to understand the person in relationship to his personal characteristics or traits which are considered to be behaviour manifestations of the individual. A person can be described as articulate, bright, dull, loving, sensitive, open, closed, extroverted, introverted, neurotic or psychotic. According to Friesen, the assumption of trait theory is that people differ in their personal characteristics and jobs differ in their requirements. Counselling is then an attempt to match traits with jobs. The counsellor administers tests to clients and on the basis of the results of these tests and other information such as interview data, references and past performance, a matching process is undertaken. This method according to Friesen is also used in the educational admission process, and in the high school, university and employment service where matching the individual qualities with educational opportunities and jobs is taken for granted and practiced indiscriminately.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
RESEARCH DESIGN
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought to examine the attitude of secondary school students towards career choice in Christian religious studies.
Sources Of Data Collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
Primary source and Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
INTRODUCTION
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
INTRODUCTION
It is pertinent to note that this research was aimed at assessing the reactions of post primary schools students on the choice of career in Christian religious studies, thus the topic “attitude of secondary school students towards career choice in Christian religious studies”.
In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges associated with the choice of career issues among secondary school students in Nigeria.
SUMMARY
The main purpose of this study was to find out factors influencing career choice among secondary school students in regards to Christian religious studies. Review of literature was based on the concept of Christian Religious Studies, the review was in line with the purpose of the study.
The sample of the study consists of 200 students from four co-educational schools (150 students for experimental group (75 males and 75 females) and 50 students for control group (17 males and 33 females)). Simple percentage was used in analyzing the data and a purposive sampling technique was adopted too. The 0.05 testing of hypotheses one revealed that there are factors that influences students’ attitude towards the study of Christian religious Studies, while hypotheses two revealed that; there is a significant difference between the attitudes of male and female students towards the study of social studies. The study revealed that reasons for student not choosing CRE were; friends think it is a subject for those who are weak, there is no guaranteed job after completion, CRE is hard to understand, very few students passed in the previous years, there are no CRE teachers and their parents said I should not take CRE. The study also found that CRE is only useful in boosting one’s mean grade, CRE does not prepare learners for the world of work and they regret for not registering for CRE, CRE syllabus is adequate in addressing the social problems emerging today, teaching CRE doesn’t wastes the student’s time, it is interesting to learn CRE, character portrayed by CRE teachers motivate, CRE should not be left to church leaders to teach and CRE should not be made a compulsory subject. The study established that majority of the CRE teachers had not taken part in the national examination marking schemes, as shown by 56.7% of the respondent indicated they had not taken part in marking exercise of national examination.
CONCLUSION
CRE teachers thought that CRE was interesting to teach CRE, other staff members do not encourage students to enroll for it CRE, there are no relevant local examples to cite in CRE, CRE has something special to offer to students’ life, CRE is not given equal treatment in the school like sciences, CRE syllabus was not too wide to be covered. The study revealed that the challenges faced when teaching C.R.E. as a subject were lack of teaching materials, lack of motivation, administration pressure, sponsor interference and parents interference. From the findings of the study the researcher would like to make the following conclusions;
- The study has evidently revealed that students’ perception on importance of C.R.E affect enrolment of students in public secondary schools in Ibesikpo Asutan Local Government Area to great extent.
- The study revealed that role of career guidance in the selection of C.R.E as a subject and it affects enrolment in public secondary schools in Ibesikpo Asutan Local Government Area to great extent as most school didn’t offer career guidance on selection of subject.
- The study further revealed that teacher’s academic qualification affected student enrolment into CRE, thus a relationship between teacher’s qualification and student enrolment in CRE in Ibesikpo Asutan Local Government Area.
RECOMMENDATIONS
In line with the findings and conclusion of the study, the researcher would make the following recommendations as a precursor to improving CRE enrolment in public secondary school through;
- There is need for the Ministry of Education Science and Technology to employ more qualified CRE teachers as this will help in increasing student enrolment in the subject.
- There is need for Ministry of Education Science and Technology and management of public secondary school to devise ways to overcome challenges faced in teaching of CRE subject.
- There is need for school to offer career guidance on subject selection as this will help in improving CRE enrollment in public secondary schools.
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