The Impact of Television on the Learning Habits of Primary School Children
CHAPTER ONE
Objective of the Study
The main purpose of the study was to determine the impact of television viewing on the learning habbit of children in primary school level in Delta State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study intends to:
- establish the impact of television viewing on the pupils language development
- determine the impact of television viewing on pupil’s numeracy development.
- establish the impact of television viewing on pupils achievement in Basic Science.
- determine the impact of television viewing on pupils’ achievement in social
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Concept of Children
Belligham (2007) defined a child as a person, known as a minor from birth to the legal age of maturity, for whom a parent and or care taker, foster parent, public or private home institution or agency is legally responsible. A person of anyage with a developmental disability for which, a guardian has been appointed by a court. The general consensus is that biologically, cognitive and socio-emotional processes all play a considerable role in children’s maturation. According to Kumuyi (2010), the stages of childhood development includes;
- Infancy: Which correspond between 0 to 2
- Early childhood: This is also known as the pre-school years and it is between 3 to 8 years. This stage is an important and distinct stage in childhood development and the following characteristics can be noticed in the early childhood stage:
Cognition: The brain grows most during early childhood stage, making for dramatically change in cognitive development. Children memory greatly advances after infancy, and they can remember large amount of information. In addition, children learn to convey their thought and ideas which relate to their every day life with the use of words and images.
Self regulation: Children learn to regulate and construct their behavior with the help of the adult.
Moral development: As a result of constant correction by parent on self – regulation, children begin to make progress in terms of moral development. This could also be as a result of the value instilled in these children by their parent with time in early childhoods. In the long run, children are able to develop their sense of right and wrong.
Physical growth: with the right nutrition, exercise and adequate care, a lot of motor skills improve dramatically in early childhood. This includes ability to engage in any physical activities such as involving in out door games like playing football, skipping and gymnastics.
Personality development and gender socialization: a child’s socio world influences the development of his personality and purposeful behavior. As children get into the later stage of early childhood. They are given more responsibility. According to Erickson psychoanalytic theory, they are in the initiative versus guilt stage. If they do not rise to the challenge of taking responsibility, they are likely to experience anxiety and guilt.
Emotional development: Pre-scholar becomes increasingly able to discuss their emotions and those of others. They can understand that people can react to the same event with emotions. Children at this stage can even develop the type of empathy that will allow them to understand and respond to a friend’s sadness.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Design of the Study
The design of the study was an ex-post facto survey design. For Kerhuger (1979), ex-post facto research design as a systematic empirical enquiry in which the researcher has no direct control of independent variables of the study because they are inherently not manipulable. In this design, inferences are made about causal relationships among variables without direct interventions or manipulation for variation in independent variables. The purpose of ex-post facto studies is to find out the factors that seem to be closely associated with certain behaviours such as achievement.
Population for the Study
The population for the study consisted of all children in the upper basic level of education in schools within Delta State. The population size was 3,696 comprising of 2,289 in urban and 1406 children in rural level (Agbor UBEC School Enrolment Statistics, 2011) The population was considered appropriate because, the children at this age learn to acquire language, talk about their experiences of television, and engage in abstract thinking which allows them to understand the stories in television. They also develop televisual literacy which allow them understand the television programmes.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
Research Question One
What is the impact of television viewing on children’s learning in primary school Level?
Table I shows the mean scores and standard deviation scores of upper primary school level on Basic literacy by both the television viewers and non-television viewers. The group of pupils that view television had a mean score of 83.41with a standard deviation of 15.30.
The non-television viewers had a mean score of 64.81 with a standard deviation of 17.20. This implies that the group of pupils that view television scored higher than the group of pupils that are non-television viewers. The standard deviation of 15.30 and 13.20 indicate that there were slight variations in the mean scores of the pupils in each group.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary
The results of Table 1 indicated that the achievement scores of pupils on Basic English test was different between those pupils that viewed television and those that do not view television. The group that viewed television had a mean achievement score of 83.41 while those that did not view television had a mean score of 64.81. This means that those who are television viewers scored higher than the group that did not view television. The standard deviation scores by both group showed that there was little variations in the mean scores of both group.
The t-test analysis carried out to determine the mean difference between the mean achievement scores of television viewers and non-television viewers showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores obtained by both groups. In other words, the null hypothesis of no significant difference was rejected. This implied that those pupils that viewed television achieved higher than their counterparts that are non-television viewers. This finding is in agreement with the earlier finding by Valkenburg (2004) who found that Television viewing make children to be faster in learning vocabulary and general knowledge of their environment. According to Valkenburg, television viewing motivates the children to learn, as exposed them to incidental learning for longer time than they would if there was no television. Also, according to Gbadebe (2007).
The finding of the study was that the television viewers scored higher than the non-television viewers in the Basic Mathematics tests at the Upper Basic School Level. The standard deviation also showed that there were small variations in the mean scores of the pupils in each group. The result further showed that there was a significant difference between the mean achievement scores of television viewers and non-viewers on Basic Mathematics tests at 0.05 level of significance in favour of the television viewers. This present finding agrees with the earlier finding by Anna (2005) and Davies (1997). According to Anna’s finding, children’s ability in quantitative reasoning was to a great extent enhanced when exposed to television programmes that involved quantitative reasoning. In other words, television viewing promoted children’s mathematics solving ability. In the same live, Davis (1997) found out that televisual literacy improved the calculative ability of children in schools. Davies also argued that children should be exposed to television programmes that involved signs and symbols as represented in mathematics’ classrooms. Television viewing by this finding helped in improving children’s numeracy skills in upper Basic Schools in Delta State of Nigeria. In support of the present findings, the National Academic (2006) also reported that television programme have educational value and helped children in their school work, particularly those activities that involved numeracy.
Conclusion of the Study
From the findings and discussions of the finding of this study, the following conclusions were reached. It was shown that television viewing has positive influence on children’s achievement in many areas of school learning including Basic English Language, Basic Mathematics, Basic Science and Social Studies at the upper Basic School Level in Delta State. By this findings, television as a mode of teaching and learning has proved to have high potential for teaching and learning school subjects at the upper basic school level.
Implication of the Findings
The results of the finding about the impact of television viewing on the learning habit of children in primary school level in Delta State has provided a support to earlier finding’s of previous studies. In other words, the place of television in enhancing the learning habit of pupils in school subjects shall seize to be in doubt as the result of the present study having provided positive evidence.
The implications of these findings include among others that television are needed in the classrooms to argument teachers’ efforts in teaching the children subjects like Basic English, Basic Mathematics, Basic Sciences and Social Studies at the upper Basic School level. Another implication is that school teachers need to be knowledgeable on the use of television for teaching and learning school subjects at the upper Basic School level. In the past, television was not used to train the present teachers and as such they lack the skills needed for using television programs in teaching and learning school subjects.
Again, the search for appropriate television programmes that would be useful to children’s educative improvement is another implication of the findings. Though television enhanced the achievement of pupils’ achievement as reported by this study, but not all television programmes may be useful in classroom instructions. The finding of the study therefore have implications for selecting appropriate television programmes suitable for teaching children in schools .
Recommendation
Following from the discussions, conclusions and implications of the study, these recommendations were made:
- The use of television should be employed in teaching and learning of Basic English language, Basic Mathematics, Basic Science and Social Studies in Basic Education Levels in Delta State of Nigeria. This is because the positive influence of television viewing on the learning habit of children in schools has been demonstrated by the findings of the
- Parents/Guardians should encourage children apple opportunity to view educative television programmes at home. This will help to enhance their learning of subjects at school as shown in this
- School administrators should provide televisions in the schools for use by teachers in showing selected television programmes to
- School authorities should encourage teachers to keep accurate records of continuous assessment tests of pupils. Such records are useful when tracking pupil’s records in
REFERENCES
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- Akpan Uwem, Udeze Sunny, Asogwa John (2014), Dysfunctional Trends in Nigeria’s Broadcast Content and Slide Towards Educational Paucity of the Nigerian Child. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.652.928&rep=rep1&type=p df
- American Academy of Pediatrics (2008). Television Viewing and Social and Cognitive Skills: Pediatrics for Parents. Retrieved March 2011 from http//www.aa.org.familytv.htm
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