Attitude Of Working Parents Towards The Education Of Their Children In Onitsha North Local Government Area Of Anambra State

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the attitude of working parents towards the education of their children in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State. Three research questions guided the study. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised of three thousand, for hundred and twenty-one (3421) pupils and teachers in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State. The sample of the study comprised of three hundred and eleven (311) pupils (primary 4, 5 and 6) and thirty-one (31) teachers from 10 selected public schools making a total of 342 respondents in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State drawn through simple random sampling technique to serve as the representative of the entire population. The instrument that used for data collection is a structured questionnaire titled “Attitude of Working Parents Towards the Education of their Children” (AWPTEC) which was validated by an expert in School of Early Childhood Care, Primary, Adult and Non-Formal Education, Federal College of Education (technical) Asaba. Three hundred and forty-two (342) copies of the validated questionnaire items were administered to pupils and teachers in the selected public schools in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State by the researcher with the help of two research assistance; 332 questionnaires were retrieved and analyzed using mean statistics. The findings of the study revealed among others that working parents have positive attitude towards the learning activities of their children, their interest, motivation and creating conducive learning environment for their children in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra Stat. On the basis of the findings, it was recommended among others that parents should be encouraged during PTA meeting to be more involved in the education of their children so as to improve their participation in learning activities and parents should make it a priory to always reinforce their children in terms of learning so that they can develop positive mindset towards.

 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Education is the best gift every parent can give to the children. It is the key to fulfilling destiny in the 21^st century. With education, a child can achieve anything and contribute to the growth and development of his or her country. Parents always want their children to be greater than them which they believe can be achieved if they are given quality education and shown love as they grow. When they grow to understand that their parents sacrifice so much for them to be where they are, they will do everything possible to make their parents proud.

Human nature is very complex and multidimensional in nature. Attitudes are the general elements of man’s nature. Attitude is the specific mental state of an individual toward something according to which his behaviour toward it is moulded (Robert, 2017). During one’s life, every one of us develops many kinds of attitudes. Attitude may be toward profession, people or philosophy of life. Attitude is a hypothetical construct that represent an individual’s like or dislike of an item. Attitudes are positive, negative or natural views of an attitude object, i.e. a person’s behaviour or event. Attitudes are positive or negative feelings that an individual hold about object, person or ideas. In simple words, an attitude may be directly observed and can be inferred from one’s own behaviour through his verbal and non-verbal responses (Austin, 2016).

Attitudes are the most important outcome of the experiences of the child. They are considered to be by products of learning and instructions. They are valuable results of development. They are emotionalized opinions formed through their experiences in the world. Attitude may be described as emotionally toned pre-disposition towards for objects and ideas. They are said to be somewhat lasting generalization of experiences, example, attitude towards divorce, democracy and dictatorships etc. Thus, they are generalized habits which partially control human behaviour, thinking and learning.

The main aim of education is to modify the behaviour of a child according to the need and expectations of the society. Behaviour is composed of many attributes. One of these important attributes is attitude. One’s behaviour, to great extent, depends upon one’s attitude towards the thing, idea, person, or object in his environment. The entire personality and development of a child is influenced by the nature of his attitudes. Learning of a subject and acquisition of habits, interests and other psychophysical disposition are all affected by his attitudes, the factors responsible for their measurement. Attitude is a predisposition or tendency to behave in a particular definite way to a particular situation. Behaviour by all means is a function of both characteristics of behaving persons and the situation, in which he behaves. Hence, a person may hold strong attitude and yet under certain circumstances, may behave in quite contradiction.

In this way, one’s behaviour towards an object related to a particular attitude cannot be safely predicted though that attitude but it can be safely said that it make the individual respond in a particular stimulus. Therefore, we may understand attitude as a determining acquired tendency in a certain way towards a specific object or a class of object to the condition prevailing in the environment (Mangal, 2018). An attitude is the degree of positive or negative effect association with some psychological object (Thurstone, 2015)). Britt (2017) sees attitude as a mental and natural state of readiness, exerting directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situation with which it is related. He Added that attitude is a readiness to react towards or against some situations, persons or thing in a particular manner to a particular degree of intensity. An attitude is an expression of favour or disfavour towards a person, place, thing, or event (the attitude object). Prominent psychologist Gordon Allport (2015) described attitudes as the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology.” Attitude can be formed from a person’s past and present. Attitude is also measurable and changeable as well as influencing the person’s emotion and behaviour.

Parental attitude is a measure or index of parental involvement. A child brought up with affection and care in the least restrictive environment would be able to cope up better with the sighted world. Therefore, the family shapes the social integration of the child more than a formal school. Turnbull (2018) has identified four basic parental roles, parents as educational decision makers; parents as parents; parents as teachers and parents as advocates. Since the parent’s attitude is so important, it is essential that the home and school work closely together, especially for children with disabilities. The Warnock Report (2017) stresses the importance of parents being partners in the education of their children. It is the parent who exerts the major influence on the development of the child from birth to maturity.

Areas is which the attitude of working parents towards the education of their children is noticed are towards their learning activities, interest and motivation and creating conducive learning environment at home. When parents monitor the learning progress of their children on daily basis by ensuring that they do assignments and or exercises, they are likely to get motivated and do more. Roy (2017) opined that the attitude demonstrated by parents towards the learning activities of their children to a large extent determines their rate of class participation which influence their academic performance.

Creating a conducive learning environment at home helps to motivate the children to develop good reading habit which helps to improve their performance academically. But when they do not have enough learning materials, they seem to be inactive when it comes to learning activities. Ronald (2016) asserted that a good learning environment at home helps to motivate children to learn. Good attitude towards their learning environment is a booster when it comes to developing good study skills.

Statement of the Problem

The attitude of the parents signifies the supporting nature of family in their children’s education. The parental attitude can be negative or positive. The negative attitude of the parents regarding education and schooling can prevent their children from doing well educationally. With less parental support in school work, low level of motivation and poor self-esteem of children can result poor academic performance. Positive attitude of the parents can be beneficial to their children in many cases and can be reflected in improvement in class performance, creating interest among children to learn, and higher achievement scores in reading and writing. The growing awareness regarding education makes many families value their children’s education and act favorably towards schooling and education of their children. They become a part of the decision-making process of school, and decide their children’s future regarding higher education.   

Some parents have so much interest in the education of their children while some are too busy to monitor the learning progress of their children. The working-class parents in some cases seem to be too busy with work, forgetting about their children’s learning. They only pay school fees and do not care if the children are doing well or not. Some of the working class male parents seem to leave their monitoring and evaluating their children’s learning progress to the female parents (mothers) thereby denying children the opportunity to learn something some both parents.

Some children seem to be left alone to help themselves with homework and assignment which results in summitting undone assignments. Academic performance of some children seems to be dropping which educationists and researchers may likely believe that it may be caused by nonchalant attitude of the some parents towards the education of their children. It is against the light of the above that this study is carried out to examine the attitude of working parents towards the education of their children in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State.

Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of this study is to examine the attitude of working parents towards the education of their children in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State. Specifically, the study seeks to examine:

1. The attitude of working parents towards the learning activities of their children in Onitsha North.
2. The attitude of working parents towards the interest and motivation of their children in Onitsha North.
3. The attitude of working parents towards creating conducive learning environment for their children in Onitsha North.

Significance of the Study

The study of this nature will be beneficial to pupils, teachers, government, researchers and the field of Primary Education.

The study will enable the pupils to understand how their parents’ attitude affects their academic performance.

It will also enable the teachers to understand the attitude of working parents towards their children’s learning activities, interest, motivation and creating learning environment for the children at home. This could help them work with the management in encouraging the parents to develop positive attitude towards the education of their children.

The findings of the study will also go a long way in calling the attention of the government through the ministry of basic education to the negative attitude of working parents towards the education of their children so as to enlighten them on the need to be more involved so that they children can be motivate to perform better in their academic activities.

Finally, the study could add to the literature in the field of Primary Education which could serve as a reference material to researchers who may wish to carry out a related study.

 Research Questions

The following research questions were raised to guide the study:

1. What is the attitude of working parents towards the learning activities of their children in Onitsha North?
2. What is the attitude of working parents towards the interest and motivation of their children in Onitsha North?
3. What is the attitude of working parents towards creating conducive learning environment for their children in Onitsha North?

Scope of the Study

This study is covered the attitude of working parents towards the education of their children in primary schools in Onitsha North Local Government Area of Anambra State. With particular emphasis on attitude of working parents towards their children’s learning activities, interest, motivation and creating conducive learning environment at home. The study is further delimited to public primary school in Oshimili North Local Government Area of Delta State.

Pages:  55

Category: Project

Format:  Word & PDF               

Chapters: 1-5                                          

Source: Imsuinfo

Material contains Table of Content, Abstract and References.