Causes of Poor Academic Performance in Chemistry at Primary School Students in Chiro Town, Ethiopia (Published)
The purpose of the study is to assess the Causes of poor academic performance in chemistry at primary school students in Chiro Town, Ethiopia. The study was carried out on 169 students’ selected stratified random sampling technique accordingly high achieve, medium achieve and lower achieve classification of students in classes with almost equal proportion of male and female from both grade seven and eight, 2 experienced teachers, 2 school principals, 4 school vice principal and 10 Parent Teacher Association members by using available sampling. Data collected from the field were coded and entered in to the computer for analysis using SPSS version-20 for windows. Reliability of the instrument was computed by using reliability statistics. A Cronbach’s alpha of 0.79 was considered high enough to judge the instruments as reliable for the study. The study revealed that even if there is much emphasis on improving students’ academic performance, still no considerable progress has been observed in the study area. The finding of this study highlighted that the lack of chemistry laboratories and the school facilities, teacher experience, lack of teachers that used local variable materials for teaching students, students’ attitude towards chemistry and parent involvement were found to be a contributing factor for these patterns as well as low achievement levels in primary schools in the study area. Therefore, it was suggested that teacher, Parent should be more practical in this area of improvement.
Keywords: : Academic Performance, School Facilities, parent and teacher related factor
TEACHER MORALE AND ATTITUDE TO WORK IN SELECTED SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE CAPE COAST MUNICIPALITY (Published)
The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher morale in the Ghanaian situation. The main issue was to examine factors that influence teacher morale and attitude to work in selected senior secondary schools in the Cape Coast municipality and also determine whether significant differences exist between morale of teachers in single sex schools and co-educational schools.The study population was made up of teachers in public senior secondary schools in the Cape Coast municipality. A combination of purposive and simple random sampling techniques was employed to select a total of 100 respondents in five selected senior secondary schools. The main research instrument used for collecting data was the questionnaire.The Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS) was used to derive the frequencies, means and the independent‘t’ test.The result of the study indicated that teacher salary and conditions of service is the factor that received very low mean score depicting that it is unsatisfactory. Satisfaction with teaching was the factor that best predicted teacher morale. As regards teacher morale and attitude of teachers to work, school facilities and student behavior made unique significant contribution. Concerning teacher morale and type of school, the t-test revealed that students’ behavior, school facilities and satisfaction with teaching are the factors that showed significant differences in single sex school as against co-educational schools.
Keywords: Attitude to work, Morale, Salary and Conditions of Service, School Facilities, Senior Secondary Schools, Teacher