Abstract

This study was designed to investigate “The Effect of Parental Background on the on Academic Achievement of Geography Students in Secondary School in The Buea Municipality”. The objectives that were used for the study were; to ascertain the degree in which socio-economic status of parents influence the academic achievement of geography students in secondary school in the Buea municipality, to examine the relationship between the level of education of parents and the academic achievement of geography students in secondary schools in the Buea municipality and to determine if the size of a family have any influence on academic achievement of geography student’s secondary school students in the Buea municipality.

The sample size was 100 students selected from three secondary  schools in Buea municipality. The questionnaire was used to obtain information from correspondents and data were analyzed using percentages and frequencies. The following results were obtained;   family size, parent socio economic background and parent level of education influence student academic achievement both positively  and negatively.

Based on the above result, the following recommendations were obtained; Parents should be made to realize the importance of motivation in determining their children academic achievement in schools, especially the realization that most of the male students are abandoning school for business. Parents should be actively involved in encouraging students to learn and also in supervising their academic work at home.

Students should give serious attention to studies at home, in addition to other various work done, since the amount of effort they put in their studies influence their academic performance. Teachers should understand that teaching is a job of conscience.

Teachers should handle the students as their own children and teach them effectively, try by all means to meet the students’ academic social and psychological needs. They should motivational in their teaching and use different teaching methods so as to go along with all categories of learners. This will help bridge deficiencies from negative family backgrounds.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Parental background has a great function as far as performance of Students is concern. This is so because in our contemporary society there has been more of modernization in learning using both basic and advance instructional materials. Parental background encompasses a variety of aspect such as parent educational level, parent’s income level and family size. All these plays a vital role as far as teaching and learning process is concern and influence academic performance of student.

This chapter presents the introduction, background of the study, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, research questions, significance of the study, scope of the study, research hypothesis, definition of terms, and chapter summary.

Background to the Study

Historically, the parents of a child constitute the family of that child. And family is a place in which children learn to interpret realities, Wary and Passman (1996), parents serve as significant interpreters to children for information about the world and children ability (Hall, Kelly, Hansen and Vulwein, 1996) family influence is an important force in preparing students for their role as workers. Young people form their attitude about work and career as a result of interaction with the family. Family background provides the basis on which a student’s career planning and decision making evolves. However, within each family, the level of involvement can very positively or negatively. In ancient Greece and Rome, childhood ended by approximately the age of six. After that, children were viewed as adults (Cunningham, 2005). During the Renaissance period, children were often seen wearing adult-like clothing and were treated as mini-adults. Life was centered around the “Renaissance man” an individual who was cultured and an expert in many different subject areas, like the arts and sciences (Bigner & Gerhardt, 2014). Thus, parenting (and life) was adult-centered.

The historical context of parent background provides a starting point for how parenting styles and practices have shifted in the United States of America. During Colonial times, the Puritan beliefs shaped the way Americans viewed the needs of their children. The term Puritan means “against pleasure” and thus, “play” was considered sinful (Mintz, 2006). During this time, they wanted to raise obedient children and thus, parents provided religious training to children by teaching them to memorize scriptures. This approach was also adult-centered. It was also a uni-directional approach, with parents having significant power over their children. Today, this parenting style would be called authoritarian.

In the Nineteenth century, there was a shift towards thinking about what children may need to grow and develop. During the industrial revolution, many fathers who were the primary disciplinarians in the household went away to work in manufacturing jobs. With this, there was a shift towards environmentalism. Mother’s played a more central role in becoming role models for their children and providing them with a range of experiences to develop their children to the fullest potential. Early Develop mentalism also emerged; this was a movement that stemmed from Europe and advocated early education for children based on their unique, individual developmental needs.

With more knowledge about how children learn and develop, there was conflicting research on what works best for children. While some researchers advocated for more permissive styles (e.g., Freud, Spock, 1967) where the child must be understood and needs must be met, others (e.g., Watson, 1988) advocated for a behaviorist approach which advocated for a child’s impulses to be controlled in order to raise obedient children. Hence, the pendulum was swinging between adult-centered and child-centered approaches.

  Conceptually, The family is the first social environment a child finds him/herself in. According to Clifford (1981) the family remains the primary environment of the child. The author emphasized that the family environment has more chances of increasing or decreasing the intellectual achievement of the child. Akubue and Okolo (2008) define the family as a small kinship structural group with the key function of natural socialization of the new born. Similarly, in (Okunniyi, 2004) the family is defined as a primary social group of parents, offspring and possibly other members of the household. Family background refers to all the conditions and circumstances in the family which influence the child physically, intellectually and emotionally (Muola, 2010). Children coming from different family backgrounds are affected differently by such family conditions; that is why some children have good backgrounds while others have poor backgrounds. Citing fleegeand Eke (1999) noted that with some families, the background may vary from time to time for the same individuals.

Formal education, therefore, remains the vehicle for human development which must start from the family. There are different categories of families; the major categories according to Anderson and Taylor (2002) being;

1. Traditional families-where the father is the major bread winner and mother at home raising the children.
2. Divorced families: Families that have been reconstituted following the breakage of marriages.
3. Single- parent families headed by either the mother or the father.
4. Step families with new siblings and new parents stemming from re-marriage.

A family could also be categorized as extended and nuclear family. Extended families are those in which a large group of related kin, in addition to parents and children, live together in the same household. This is the type of family prevalent in the African society. Nuclear families are families where married couples reside together with their children. These types of families are common in the western countries (Andersen & Taylor, 2000).

Families are of various sizes. Family size has to do with the total number of people in a single family which may include the father, mother, children and even the extended members, all living in one hamlet. According to Alio (1995) family size has implications for education. The author emphasizes that the size of the family determines to a great extent the relative amount of physical attention and time which each child gets from his or her parents. Large families are more common among the lower class of the society. Children in large  families may suffer poverty and lack parental encouragement and stimulus which motivates their academic achievement (Amon ,2005).Similarly, smaller family size has been linked with high academic achievement  (Majoribank, 1996). Majoribank further notes that students with fewer siblings are likely to receive more parental attention and have support that leads to better school performance. The family begins the process of education and offers the physical and psychological needs of the child. This supports the view of Maduewisi (1982) that the environmental experience from the family, peer group and school location have a great influence in determining the  child’s intellectual ability. She maintained that bright students from the under- privileged family environment may turn dull due to an impoverished family environment. She added that mental development influences intellectual development. This is in line with Hebb (1987) who observed that the innate potentials of children cannot be attained without an adequate stimulating family environment because the child cannot do well intellectually. The implication is that a proper stimulating family environment with intellectual potentials and appropriate teaching methods will enhance maximum performance of the child.

Contextually, In Cameroon, especially in the south west region, most children whose parents cannot afford to pay for high cost of formal education are enrolled into apprenticeship programs such as carpentry, bricklaying, petty trading and others. In the study area, there is a seemingly general mislead of carreer choice, as most of the youth don’t longer value education, neither do they listen to their parent advice among secondary school students. Evidences of the wrong career choice is mostly noted in form four where students select their trade of study as to choice a career there after

It is against this background that the researcher is interested investigating the influence of parents background on career choice of geography students in secondary schools in the Buea municipality. The researcher intends to investigate the variables in the parents’ (family) background with the view of assessing their relative influence on the academic achievement of geography students in secondary schools in the Buea municipality.

Statement of Problem 

Arising out of the need for students to achieve academically in school, parents continue to have anxiety over the academic performance of their children especially in geography. This concern arises out of the fact that children no longer perform well academically as well as their counterparts of past years.

Some of the parent do not care or do not want to check if any extraneous factors are responsible for the poor academic performance of their children.  Despite Cameroon government investing in funding the secondary education by providing the necessary teaching materials needed to teach geography, academic achievement of students still keep falling as years past, a situation that discourages the interested parties‟ support to education. Experience has shown that among secondary school students there exist some differences that influence students‟ academic achievement.

These differences includes payment of school fees; some students are able to pay fees promptly while others often sent away due to non-payment of school fees. In addition, some students have problems with provision of uniforms and other basic requirements while their parents through provision of basic and educational materials motivate their counterparts from rich families.

The gap in students‟ performance and academic excellence constitutes a great source of worry and serious discomfiture to both parents, school managers, policy makers and the various governments responsible for education of students in secondary schools. It is against this background that the study sought to determine the effect of parental background on the on academic achievement of geography students in secondary school in the Buea municipality.

The objective of the Study

General Objective of the Study

The main objective of the study is to examine the impact of parents’ background on the academic achievement of geography students in the Buea municipality.

Specific Objectives of the Study

Specific objectives of the study are:

1. To ascertain the degree in which socio-economic status of parents influence the academic achievement of geography students in secondary school in the Buea municipality.
2. To examine the relationship between the level of education of parents and the academic achievement of geography students in secondary schools in the Buea municipality.
3. To determine if the size of a family has any influence on the academic achievement of geography students’ secondary school students in the Buea municipality.

Read: Curriculum Studies Project Topics with Materials