ABSTRACT

This study determined the relationship between parents’ and teachers’ motivational strategies and students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Cross River State, Nigeria. The study adopted a correlation survey research design. A sample of 397 respondents consisting of 23 teachers and 374 senior secondary school III students drawn from a population of 46,774 respondents which comprised 2,715 teachers and 44,059 students from 484 public secondary schools in the three educational zones of Cross River State was used for the study. The sample was drawn using multi-staged sampling. The instruments for data collection were 40-item researcher-developed questionnaire titled Parents’ and Teachers’ Motivational Strategies Questionnaire (PTMSQ) and 2019 NECO Students’ Achievement Scores in English language. The PTMSQ instruments was validated by three experts two from the Department of Educational Management and one from Measurement and Evaluation, in the Department of Science education all in College of Education, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. Pearson product moment correlation was used to determine the stability of the PTMSQ instrument while Cronbach Alpha statistic was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument. This yielded 0.85 and coefficients of 0.88 for stability and for internal consistencies of PTMSQ respectively. The NECO result did not need to be validated nor tested for reliability since it is from a standardize examination. Two brief research assistants helped in data administration and collection, 97% of the instruments were properly filled and retrieved. Pearson product moment correlation was used to answer the eight research questions raised for the study while linear regression analysis was used to test the eight null hypotheses that guided the study at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed among others that parents’ prompt payment of students’ school fees, Parents’ provision of learning materials, Parents’ provision of ICT tools, teachers’ provision of friendly learning environment and the use of appropriate teaching methods and good classroom management skills among others have strong significant positive relationship with students’ academic performance in public secondary schools. Based on the findings, the study recommended among others that Government and Principals of schools should devise means or mechanisms that will encourage parents to pay their children’s school fees promptly in order to enhance students’ academic performance in their respective schools.