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HOME ENVIRONMENT AND ITS EFFECT ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Background of the Study
The academic performance of any student cannot be separated from the home environment in which the child lives, healthy home environment offers emotional security to a child. Education has one of its basic task as to train young people to become useful members of the society. This training begins at home in the informal way. The home of the child is the first place he enters as he is born into the world by his or her parents.
Children are motivated to work on activities and learn new information and skills when their environments are rich in interesting activities that arouse their curiosity and offer moderate challenges. The same can be said about home environment , unfortunately there is much variability in motivational influences in homes, some homes have many activities that stimulate children thinking as well as computer, books, puzzles and parents who may be heavily interested in their children cognitive development and spent time with them on learning. Much of the variability in the relation between family income and children’s intellectual development comes from the family provision of a stimulating home environment (Young, Linver & Brooks, 2002). Children intellectual development is most strongly influenced by the home environment during infancy and early childhood. When they are under the direct influence of parents. As children mature, schools and peers also begin to play a role in their intellectual socialization. There is much evidence supporting the hypothesis that the quality of a child’s early learning in the home environment relate positively to the development of intelligent and reading skills, (Meece, 2002, Sene Chai & Lefevre 2002), and parental involvement in schooling also predict achievement (Luckner, Whaley & Egeland, 2004).
Various homes factors have been shown to be important, mother’s responsiveness, discipline style and involvement with the child, organization of the environment, availability appropriate of learning materials, opportunities for daily stimulation. Parents, who provide a warm, responsive and supporting environment, encourage exploration, stimulate curiosity and provide play and learning materials accelerate their children’s intellectual development (Meece, 2006). Which on the long run increases academic performance?
Within the home environment we must examine both the roles of mothers and fathers because differentiate parent behaviour has often been implicated as a variable affecting children’s development. Some of the potential parental behaviour that can influence children motivational beliefs are:
- Attributions for the child’s school performance
- Perception of the task difficulty of school work
- Value for school work
- Expectation and confidence in children’s abilities
The home environment provide the foundation for learning and is an element of the student life that can affect grades. Providing opportunities to learn outside the school help facilitate student success in the school environment, as reported by the university of Minnesota extension. According to experts the mother’s educational level had the single most important impact on a young child’s academic performance.
The school cannot single handedly provide the continuation of the home environment, but the can play estimate role in laying foundation of the child in learning how to read and write however, this influence is characterized by various factors such as the parents educational attainment and cultural issues. Over the years the society recorded a persisted increase in the poor performance in the various school examination such as the senior school exam (S.S.C.E) comments from educator have shown that the blame for poor performance has been as a result of neglect and care free attitude toward academic work by students and parents. It is against this background that researcher has decided to investigate academic performance on child. There are innumerable factors that affect the child academic performance as stated above. It is obvious that a child academic performance is directly related to his or her environment as well as learning facilities and socio cultural issues. Every child is born with certain level of intellectual ability and capability but a good conducive environment with adequate learning facility will help boost intellectual and academic capability of the child. Parent from good learned environment will; always have good attitude toward education any provide learning materials such as the television, instructive videos, books and toys (creative toys) etc that facilitate the learning process if they are provided.
Educated parents will always believe that it is important to help a child with his or her home work and revise the school work that the child had done but this is the opposite if a child is from a poor home environment to a large extent he or she is deprived of the opportunities and he or she struggle with the teaching and learning process.
