Influence of Family Background on the Academic Performance of Physics Students
CHAPTER ONE
Purpose of the Study
There is no gain for any country whose educational planners and policy makers stands and watch the falling standard and steady decline of education at a given rate. They must identify the causes for such decline with a view of proffering solution to them.
This research work is set to accomplish the following objectives;
- To investigate into the effect of family background on the educational performance of students’.
- To find out if social-economic status of parents influence their students’ academic performance in physics.
- To find out whether educational attainment of parent affect their students’ academic performance in physics.
- To find out the influence of family size on educational upbringing of physics students.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Introduction
This chapter is concerned with the review of related literature on the study. This review shall be presented under theoretical conceptual frame work, empirical studies and summary.
Theoretical Framework
The review is organized under the following headings and sections
Orhungur (1990) asserts that the socio-economic status of the family determine the type of education the child will receive from the parents and level of sophistication the child attains in habits, attitudes, and values. High income or prestige families tend to send their children to high prestige schools.
He further explained that “ a low income family with plenty of feeding problems may produce children whose physical and mental development pose real challenges to the schools effort at optimum development of the child” Commenting on this Coleman(1999) said that the last single predictor of children’s performance in school is the child’s family standard. This assertion according to Coleman (2000), it is the families that first exposed the child to educational activities such as videos, books and many others that help educate the child.
However, some researchers have classified parents’ socio-economic status into different categories. According to Toullators (1998) named as high, middle and low levels socio-economic statuses. He established that, children whose parents are well place in the society scored substantially higher in physics than those from the lower socio-economic group. Agreeing with this classification, Hurlock (2003 page 32) also establish that children of the higher socio-economic group tend to be creative than those of the lower groups. The former, for the most part are brought up under democratic training methods, while the later are far more likely to experience authoritarian training.
Sexton (1998) in his own study said that children from poor homes are handicapped some time by the high rate of sickness and poor rate of attendance at school. He went further to say that, the type and native of home environment into environment in turn affect the child academic performance.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This chapter deals with the research design, area of study, population, sample and samplings instrumentation, validation of instruments, method of data collection as well as method data analysis.
Research Design
The research design adopted for this study was the survey method. According to Kerhinger in Agbe (1999) defines a research design as the planed structure and strategy of investigating conceived so as to obtain answers to research questions and control of variances are the basic tasks of a research design.
Survey design required that data are typically collected through questionnaires, interview or observation of a particular time, from a sample for the purpose of describing the population represented by the sample of that particular point in time.
Thus, the researcher used the survey design to ascertain whether the selected variables have any significant relationship on educational performance on students. By using this design, the researcher will sample from the population that can allow inferences from generalization to the total population.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS, INTERPRETATION AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Introduction
This chapter is discussed under the following sub-headings: Data presentation, Analysis, interpretation and finally discussion of findings
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
Introduction
This chapter summarizes the entire project work while conclusions are drawn. In relation to the present findings, in this chapter useful recommendations are also made.
Recommendations
The investigation of family background as it affects academic performance of students was carried out though limited by several factors such as time constraint for field works, unavailability of money to cover the cost. It is based on this backdrop, therefore, that further research is required. Some of which have been suggested below:
- A comparative study of family background in rural areas and that of urban areas as it affects academic performance of the students, be carried out with larger sample size.
- A study of the perceptions of parents of different home background as related to educational development be undertaken to ascertain the level of failing standard of education.
Conclusions
From the study carried out and presented above these observations were made from which conclusions were derived. Differences in academic performance of children are a function of differences in educational background of the parents. Due to inadequate resources, children are not provided with academic needs that could facilitate conducive learning because of poor socio-economic status of some parents. This has some effects on student’s performance. Based on the above observations the following conclusions were reached:
- There exists a difference between the academic performance of students from educated and non-educated parents.
- The socio-economic status (wealth) of parents influence the academic performance of the children
- Family size and home situation are determining factors for children development and as such they affect the academic performance of the students also.
Suggestion for Further Study
The following suggestions have been made:
- parents should shun the temptation of giving all their time to their jobs and other activities to the detriment of their children. They should rather put attention to their children’s welfare and academic progress to encourage them to perform better in school.
- To policy makers, findings of researches on educational development are able to achieve desired goals. More so, efforts be made to educate our populace on the relevance of educating their children so as to improve on the number as well as performance of their children.
- School administrators should encourage the establishment of Parent’s Teachers association (PTA), as a forum for both parents’ and Teachers to discuss the academic progress of their children. Another forum should also be created for parents, students and teachers to further enhance interactions.
REFERENCES
- Akahomen, D, Emuhi, J.O. andlgun, S.N (2012). Effect of socio-economic Background of parents on student’ Academic performance in English language. International journal of social science Tomorrow 1 (7) 23-34.
- Agbe N.N. (1995), “The influence of childhood experience on development of self concept. Implication for paper presentation.
- Barry, J. (2005). The effect of socio-economic status on students’ academic achievement, unpublished thesis work, Wichita state university. London.
- Battle, Juan. And Michad Levis. (2002). The increasing significance of class: the relative effects of race and socio economic status on academic achievement. Journal of poverty, 6(2), 21- 35
- Carbonaro, William. (2005). Tracking, students’ effort academic achievement. Sociology of education 78(1), 27-49.
- Crosnoe, Robert, Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson and Glen. H Elder Jr. 2004. Intergenerational Bonding in school. The behavioral and contextual correlates of student-teacher relationships. Sociology of education, 77(1), 60-81s
- Crosnoe, Robert, Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson and Glen. H Elder Jr. 2004. School size and the interpersonal side of education. And examination of race/ethnicity and organizational contest social science quarterly, 85(5),1259-1274
- Eamon, Mary. Keegan. (2005). Social demographic, school, neighborhood, and parenting influences on academic achievement of latino young adolescents. Journal of youth and adolescence, 34(2), 163-175
- Dormina, Thurston. (2005). Leveling the home advantage assessing the effectiveness of parental involvement in elementary school. Sociology of education. 78,223-249
- Ogunshola, F. (2012). The effect of parental socio-economic status on academic performance of students. International journal of academic research in business and social sciences 2(7), 19-22
