Psychosocial Factors As Corellates Of Students' Choice Of Geography In Senior Secondary School In Onitsha North Local Government Area Of Anambra State

ABSTRACT

Geography is one of the important social science subjects taught in Nigeria Senior Secondary school. But despite its importance and relevance to everyday life in addition to its interesting nature, it has been made an elective course in the secondary school curriculum. Thus, students are made to choose from a wide variety of other elective subjects among which geography is included being influenced by a lot of factors. In this study, efforts are made to study psychosocial factors such as students' perception, teachers' attitude and peer group influence as correlates of students' choice of geography as a senior secondary subject in Onitsha North Local Government Area, Anambra State. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were adopted for the study. Correlational design was adopted for the study. The sample size for the study consisted of 100 respondents made up of senior secondary class two students drawn from public secondary schools in Onitsha North Local Government area of Anambra state through multistage sampling. Data was obtained using a self-developed questionnaire by the researcher which contained fifteen items structured to suit the research questions. The reliability of the instrument was done using Cronbach Alpha (a) and reliability coefficient of 0.98 was obtained. Mean, standard deviation simple percentages were used to answer the research questions and multiple regression analysis was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 levels of significance. The findings showed that: although students' perception, teachers' attitude and peer influence had positive relationships with students' choice of Geography, statistically, there was no significant correlation between students' perception and students' choice of geography as a senior secondary subject; there was no significant correlation between teachers' attitude and students' choice of geography as a senior secondary school subject; peer influence does not significantly correlate with students' choice of geography as a subject. One of the educational implications was that teachers' attitude could influence students' choice of geography as a subject. It was recommended that recruitment of qualified teachers should be carefully done by the concerned agencies and teachers should be well motivated as it can affect their attitudes towards their work.