EFFECT OF POOR FAMILY BACKGROUND ON TEACHING INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN DEGEMA LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF RIVERS STATE
ABSTRACT
POOR FAMILY BACKGROUND
Family backgrounds have been of great important in shaping the performance of children in schools worldwide. This is because academic performance is usually as a result of motivation that children get from the people they interact with in their initial stages of life. Therefore, the study investigated the effect of poor family background on teaching information and communication technology in junior secondary school in Degema local government of Rivers State. The influence of parenting life styles and social class on students attitudes in ICT was examined while exploring the influence of parental beliefs and expectations of their children. The study was carried out using ex-post facto method which involved the use of questionnaire on a sample size of 208 respondents that included 100 parents and 100 standard six students and 8 ICT teachers from 8 sampled junior secondary school. The findings of the study showed that there was no association between professions, parental beliefs and expectations, parenting life styles and social classes with junior secondary students’ attitudes on learning ICT. Practically, the finding suggests that parents and family members and teachers to work together and provide the students with appropriate guidance especially while at home. The finding suggests that the teachers should realize the necessity of individualizing their teaching by structuring their teaching methods and instructional resources to take care of the divergent parental backgrounds of the students.TEACHING INFORMATION
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Education is a basic tool used by society for transmission of its societal values (Asikhia, 2010). It has become an area of prime importance not only for government or voluntary agencies but also for individuals, families, governments and communities. Mitchelmore (2010) asserts that the overall importance of education in general to mankind cannot be overemphasized. No nation can afford to neglect education and hope to thrive in any field of human endeavour. Education is imperative for useful living in any society. The family has the potential to influence a student‘s academic achievement because it is the first environment of the student. Ololube (2012) asserts that the initial experience that would mould the child‘s values, aspirations, emotions, interest and attitudes are offered by the parents/family. What the child learns at home and how his family motivates him/her towards education contributes to the child‘s success in school (Omoregbe, 2010).TEACHING INFORMATION
Information and communication technology education have been used interchangeably in secondary school as with computer studies. In some cases it has been referred to as while in other cases it is called computer literacy. In whatever way, it means the same thing. Information and communication technology education is the effort or the ability to make the generality of the people computer literate. They went further to state that learning information and communication technology means ability to tell the computer what you want it to do and understand what the computer says. It can also be looked at as a process of educating the people on how to use a computer to run a program and diverse application including business, industry and commerce (Okorie, 2001). Computer studies according to Edhuze (2003) involve teaching and inculcating in the learner the basic skills required to independently manipulate the computer to achieve educational goals. He further stated that, computer studies as a subject is aimed at making students acquire skills and competencies required in this digital word of competitiveness. Such basic skills and competencies upon graduation make them conversant with term and practices embedded in the world of computer. Computer studies is therefore a subject organized to enable people understand the function, uses and limitations of the computer and to provide an opportunity for the study of the modern methods of information processing. POOR FAMILY BACKGROUND
There are several factors affecting the teaching and learn of information and communication technology (ICT) of which family background is inclusive. Family backgrounds have been of great important in shaping the performance of children in schools worldwide. This is because academic performance is usually as a result of motivation that children get from the people they interact with in their initial stages of life. A study conducted in the U.S.A by Rouse and Barrow (2006) revealed that years of schooling completed and educational achievement of students, varied widely by family backgrounds. Rouse and Barrow (2006) found out that students who came from less disadvantaged families had higher average test scores and were more likely to have never been held back a grade as compared to students from the more disadvantaged families. However they highlighted that it was not clear to reflect the causal effect of family backgrounds on the child’s educational achievement which creates a gap that this study sought to fill by finding out the influence of family backgrounds on the students’ academic performance
The relationship between parental resources on the learning of ICT of students has received a great deal of attention in the economic literature in African Countries. For instance, Guo and Harris (2000) observed that in Ghana and South Africa states, students’ performance in school was strongly associated with their parents’ educational attainments. The strong correlation between parental income and student’s scholarly achievements is one of the major findings in the literature on the determinants of children’s attainments. However, the fact that students of parents with high levels of schooling or income perform better than those from less advantageous family backgrounds does not necessarily imply that the former exert relatively more effort. Consequently, the significance of education attainments and learning of ICT are related in most African countries. This is because, how well an individual performs in primary and secondary school largely determines the individual’s final post-secondary educational destination (Charles, 2003). \In East Africa for instance, parents try to influence the activities that relate to their children’s schooling performance, make investments of time and money in their children, and serve as their role models and set objectives and priorities for them to follow (Venkatesh, 1999). In Kenyan situation, financial constrains, education level of the parent and the marital status of the parents are the key determinant of student motivation to study. For instance, a study by Pamela and Kean (2010) stated that those students whose parents had a tertiary level of education performed, significantly better in tests of science, reading and mathematical ability than do those whose parents had only basic schooling. Thus, across these three disciplines, the average grades achieved by students with well-educated parents ranged from 7% higher than those achieved by students with poorly educated parents in developing countries to 45% higher in most developed countries. This therefore, shows that parents’ education has some influences on the students’ beliefs and behaviors, leading to positive outcomes for children and youth. A study conducted by Kamar (2008) revealed that parents of moderate to high income and educational background held beliefs and expectations that were closer than those of low-income families to the actual performance of their children, Low-income families instead had high expectations and performance beliefs that did not correlate well with their children’s actual school performance. POOR FAMILY BACKGROUND
However, relationship between family background in the learning of ICT has received only limited attention both on theoretical and empirical grounds. One of the few works in the theoretical literature that takes into account family background, is a paper Ng’ang’a (2008) who compared a standard grading system to a competitive grading system in terms of the level of student effort each family was able to motivate, and showed that the family system’s relative advantage depended crucially on the nature of the family background distorting academic achievement. Ng’ang’a (2008) further showed that when leisure is a normal good and students are given monetary rewards by their parents unrelated to their learning of ICT they become less diligent. Ng’ang’a (2008) however focused on the motivation that families provide to students in terms of monetary rewards. This therefore creates a gap on other ways that family background influences the performance of students. POOR FAMILY BACKGROUND
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EFFECT OF POOR FAMILY BACKGROUND ON TEACHING INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN DEGEMA LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF RIVERS STATE
