Social Competence and Gender as Predictors of Junior Students' Academic Achievement in Basic Science in Enugu State

Okoli, Josephine Nwanneka; Ikusika, Bamidele Adunola

Research ArticleOpen Access

Social Competence and Gender as Predictors of Junior Students' Academic Achievement in Basic Science in Enugu State

Josephine N. Okoli¹^*, Bamidele A. Ikusika¹

¹Department of Science Education, Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), Enugu, Nigeria

* Corresponding author: Josephine N. Okoli

Abstract

The study investigated social competence and gender as predictors of junior secondary school students' academic achievement in basic science in Enugu state. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The predictive correlation design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 9,192 upperbasic science students in Enugu state. The sample size for the study was 1000 students drawn using multi-faceted sampling procedure involving purposive and random sampling techniques. The instrument for data collection was Students ' Social Competence Scale. The students' achievement scores in Basic science were obtained from the teachers' score folder. Data generated from the study was analysed using simple and multiple linear regressions. The findings of the study revealed among others that 1.6% and 1.1% of the variance in achievement in Basic science was attributed to social competence and gender of Basic science students' respectively. Also, achievement scores in Basic science were significantly predicted by social competence and gender, individually and jointly. It was recommended that basic science teachers should ensure that the atmosphere within the classroom is gender friendly enough, making sure that both male and female students have a conducive social atmosphere to be actively involved in learning Basic science.

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Publication history

Published: 1 July 2024

Copyright & licence. © 2024 the author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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