This study investigated the impact of mother- child relationship on moral behaviour of secondary school science students in South west, Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive design of the survey type. The population of the study consisted of 804,278 public secondary school science students in South West Nigeria and the sample consisted of 1,500 public secondary school science students in South West Nigeria which was drawn out of population using multistage random sampling procedure. The instrument used in the study was tagged ‘Mother-Child Relationship and Moral Behaviour Questionnaire (MCRMBQ)’. Face and content validities were determined by experts in science education. Corrections were effected based on their observations and instructions. Reliability of the instrument was ascertained through test-retest method and the reliability coefficient of 0.72 was obtained. The data collected was analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics. The result showed that the level of moral behavior of secondary school science students based on mothers’ educational level was moderate. It was also revealed that there is significant difference in moral behavior of secondary school science students based on mothers’ educational levels and that students whose mothers’ educational level were above secondary school had the highest moral behavior among the students. From the findings, it was recommended that adult literacy should be organized for parents especially mother with children in science classes in secondary schools so that they can contribute to their children’s moral behavior which will definitely affect their learning outcomes.
Keywords: Moral behaviour, mother- child relationship, mothers’ educational level, science education and communication pattern
