INFLUENCE OF COLLABORATION EFFORTS OF TEACHERS AND PARENTS ON THE ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF CHEMISTRY STUDENTS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Education is a basic tool used by society for transmission of its societal values. It has become an area of prime importance not only for government or voluntary agencies but also for individuals, families, governments and communities. “Voluntary agencies and individuals are committing a lot of resources in order to achieve success in the educational enterprise” (Orhungur, 2015). The overall importance of education in general and science education in particular to mankind cannot be over‐emphasized. No nation can afford to neglect science education at any level of education and hope to thrive in any field of human endeavour. Science education is imperative for useful living in any society. It is at the centre for producing resources necessary for socio‐economic, scientific and technological development needed for advancement of any nation. Effective science teaching involves student’s active participation in the teaching and learning process, more especially as it involves asking and answering questions. Lack of active participation of students has been described as one of the factors responsible for poor academic performances in science subjects (Usman, 2014)

In today's world science has advanced rapidly, we are not able to keep pace with the science of motion and it passed on to students. Five major benefits were identified for most students in the co-taught classrooms: improved academic performance, more tune with and attention from the teacher, increased emphasis on cognitive strategies and study skills, increased emphasis on social skills, and improved classroom communities (Lee, 2019)

Chemistry is one of the important science subjects taught at the Senior Secondary School (SSS) level. It is one of the core science subjects that students are required to pass at credit level in order to qualify for admission into tertiary institutions to pursue science-based programmes. In spite of this central and important position of chemistry among others science and related disciplines, studies revealed that, academic achievement of students in chemistry at Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE) has consistently been very poor and unimpressive (Njoku, 2015).

Chemistry, a branch of science, teaches that everything one sees, touches or/and feels is made up of elements and combination of elements. Elements are the constituents of matter. So, studying Chemistry makes their existence and their interactions popular (Helmenstine, 2012). These interactions and their results, manifest in what is seen today as new discoveries. The pace of this rapid development being experienced in all facets of life, particularly in the advanced countries of the world, is being achieved through men‟s hard work. These men are products of well-planned school curricula which place emphasis on the development of thinkers and producers through the study of science and technology (Olabiyi, 2012)

As a Science subject, Chemistry is full of activities which enhance the acquisition of certain skills and competences that can make an individual become scientifically literate and self-adaptive. It is a sine-qua-non for national development (FRN, 2018). The need to study the subject cannot be ignored because it has a pivotal role in national development and technological emancipation and advancement. It acts as a basic index for understanding the complexities of very important and specialized areas of study in pure and applied sciences (Ogundipe, 2014).

The chemistry teacher’s success in the classroom depends very much on his preparedness for the instruction process. It has been observed that most of the present chemistry teachers in secondary schools are not professional chemistry teachers nor have they even undergone a teacher training programme. (Onwioduokit & Ikwa, 2015). Though chemistry is view by many, that is not any easy subject to comprehend among science subjects, the level of academic achievement is not always appealing from other science subjects among the students. According to Derck (2017). In spite of the popularity of chemistry among students, the failure rate has remained very high.

Teachers reported that students outside their co-taught classes also benefited from the emphasis on cognitive strategies and study skills development. They liked the student performance improvements they saw and went on to teach these skills to students in their other classes. Many teachers reported that the social skills of students without disabilities also improved in inclusive classrooms. Participants provided a broad array of behaviors as examples of improved social skills, such as fewer fights and verbal disagreements, less name calling, better problem solving, "overt acts of kindness," better materials sharing, fewer classroom cliques, and more cooperation during group work assignments. (Otto and Karbach, 2019). As noted earlier, many of the collaborative teachers emphasized social skills development through direct instuction, practice opportunities, and feedback. Many participants reported teaching their students various communication, coping, and problem-solving skills. In addition, these teachers posted classroom rules and other reminders that emphasized students' responsibilities to "show kindness, respect others and remember feelings. The benefits for general and special education teachers that were reported by both teacher participants and administrator participants included increased professional satisfaction, opportunities for professional growth, personal support, and increased opportunities for collaboration.

Collaborative teaching, is sometimes called cooperative teaching or team teaching, involves educators working in tandem to lead, instruct and mentor groups of students. Collaboration most often occurs among professionals from various disciplines including core subjects, special education, elective courses, library science or guidance programs. On some occasions, teachers from the same department or grade level may team teach to target multiple levels of learning or provide a greater variety of supervised activities for students to practice skills. Collaboration can be implemented across all instructional levels and subject areas.

Collaboration is a wonderful teaching tool. Teachers have the opportunity to assess and differentiate instruction for students more readily and they can learn new instructional techniques from one another to expand their teaching repertoire. Cooperative teaching experiences also provide mutual support and assistance for planning and implementing lessons, assessing students’ progress, sharing professional concerns, and addressing students’ learning needs. Most importantly, teaming allows more opportunities for students to understand and connect with content thereby maximizing individual learning potential.

Collaborative teaching involves two or more people sharing responsibility for teaching and imparting knowledge to students. It involves the distribution of responsibility among people for planning, instruction, and evaluation for a classroom of students. (Wilder, 2014).Another way of saying this is that co-teaching is a fun way for students to learn from two or more people who may have different ways of thinking or teaching. Some people say that co-teaching is a creative way to connect with and support others to help all children learn. Others say that co-teaching is a way to make schools more effective.

Considering the number of ways that team teaching can be used effectively in the classroom, it is no wonder that it remains a popular instructional model. Collaborative teaching allows teachers to impart information to a broader range of learners using approaches that spark students’ imaginations while supporting individual learning differences.

Collaborative teaching partnerships provide unique opportunities for many special educators to share their knowledge and expertise about effective cognitive strategies (e.g., paraphrasing, mnemonics, reading comprehension) and study skills (e.g., notebook organization, homework completion, time management). A number of co-teachers, particularly those who worked with upper elementary and middle school students, reported that the increased attention to the development of study skills and cognitive strategies had helped improve many students' classroom performance.

Collaborative teaching is not one person teaching one subject followed by another who teaches a different subject. Many teachers are familiar with this structure if their students travel in groups within a departmentalized administrative framework. In this case, however, the teachers often do not have time to plan or evaluate instruction. Instead, they are responsible for covering the subject matter individually within their curriculum areas (Wang and Lin, 2019) and then the math teachers who are then replaced by the language arts teachers, replace them, and so on. Collaborative teaching is not one person teaching one subject while another person prepares instructional materials at the Xerox machine in the teachers’ work-room or corrects papers in the teachers’ lounge. This is a familiar arrangement for those teachers who have the luxury of working with a paraprofessional, a parent, or a community volunteer in the classroom. Co-teaching is also not occurring when one teacher conducts a lesson and others stand or sit by and watch. This often happens when there are observers or volunteers who come into the classroom with no specific function or assignment. Co-teaching is not happening when the ideas of one person prevail for what is to be taught or how it will be taught. This type of structure often occurs when a group of would-be co-teachers defer to the eldest, to the person with the most presumed authority, or to the person with the most convincing voice.

Collaborative teaching can be likened to teachers-parents teaching, since this two people plays a vital role on students academic performance. This people share ideas, knowledge, chores, work together creatively to overcome the inevitable challenges and problems, and anticipate conflict and handle it in a constructive way in ensuring students success in academics. There are five elements that facilitate cooperative processes: face-to-face interactions, positive interdependence, interpersonal skills, monitoring progress and individual accountability. Each of the five elements is now defined in more detail.

Educational researchers and practitioners have been advocating the use of collaboration as a means of improving teachers’ instructional practice and subsequently student outcomes (Garderen et al., 2012). Spurred on by reform efforts that are placing a greater onus on schools to account for student achievement (Bunker, 2018) and the growing number of students with disabilities being served in the general education setting (Winn & Blanton, 2015), the call for general education teachers to work collaboratively with special education teachers is still growing.

Hourcade and Bauwens (2012) argue that when teachers collaborate they have an opportunity to capitalize upon the unique and specialized knowledge and skills of their colleagues, while Sawyer (2017) maintains that collaboration acts as a catalyst for instructional creativity and innovation. In contrast, when teacher collaboration is absent and teachers operate in isolation, school cultures tend be non-innovative, conservative, and individualistic.

Parents have an enormous influence on their children several reason but most importantly because they are their children’s first teachers.  As Joseph (2015) asserted that parental involvement is the most influential factor which can promote higher achievement levels and educational success among students.  Children's brains are like sponge the first couple years of their lives and they absorb in everything surrounding them. Therefore, what they learn from their parents in the first couple years of their lives will impact children for the rest of their lives, it is important that children learn how to be excited about learning from an early age. Parents are die ones who need to instill this excitement in their children. The education that children receive is very much dependent on the education that their parents received when they were children. Research shows that literacy of their parents strongly affects the education of their children.

Parents strongly affect this social learning process because they are the biggest influence of this early in their children's lives, one of the reasons why is strongly affects their children's education is because "parents who have gone beyond a high school education are found to be more involve with their infant and children than those who did not finish high school. Many less educated parents simply have more unmanaged stress in their lives, and this stress interferes with ability and opportunity to interact with their child" . Typically, parents who have finished high school and gone off to receive additional schooling understand the pressures and stresses of school are more equipped to handle them with their children when they go through school. Parents who have obtained further educational opportunities also have less stress in their lives because they most likely making more money while spending less time making that money than those who, unfortunately have not been able to finish high school for one's reason or another,

Neuman (2016) opined that less educated parents are likely be involved in their children education progress because research repeatedly demonstrate, that schools and schools districts do better when parents are engage as equal partners in the decisions making that affects their children and their schools this richer level of engagement will parents and the public of large better understand their vital connection to quality public education. Parents education do not participate as often in their children's education to some because they do not realize the importance of their interaction with schools they are probably intimidated just like they were in high school.

Humre and Pianta (2016) reported that positive students –teachers relationship are a valuable resource for students. They suggested that having a positive relationship with a teacher allows students to be able to work on their self because they know they can count on their teachers if problems arises that the teachers will recognize and respond to the problem. They also recommended that talking with a teacher and conducting observations in the classroom will provide important and unique information for designing interventions, they concluded that forming strong and supportive relationships with teachers allow students to feel safer and more secure in the school setting, feel more competent, make more positive connections with peers and make greater academic gains. Humre, Pianto Burchinal, field, crouch, Downer, Howes, Laparo and Little (2012).Posited that teachers need to be actively engaged in interactions with children in order for learning to occur. Parents’ high aspiration does have additional benefit over and above the advantages children enjoy from being capable and receiving adequate stimulation and resources. Children who are academically successful hold positive attitude school and are well adjusted emotionally and socially (Jeynes, 2015). The academic success is due to the children’s innate abilities and reflects the advantage of being in the socio economic level. Children who are economically advantaged receive enough stimulation at home and in school thereby enhancing their academic achievement.

Statement of the problem

Despite the intervention of teachers and parents in ensuring that students perform well in chemistry most students still find it difficult to pass the subject. The continued poor performance in chemistry has been attributed to a number of attitudinal factors including students’ attitude towards chemistry, teachers’ attitude towards students' abilities and poor teaching methodologies among others.  The challenges of single parenthood, family crises and the ever increasing involvement of women in various areas of community and national development makes one to ask questions as to whether parents are still able to be committed to their wards; or whether they are putting enough efforts towards effective learning of science among children. Indeed teacher’s academic background, training and professional competence is at stake here. Poor academic performance of students in chemistry could also be traced to lack of teachers’ competence and learning resources in our classroom. It was observed that many students at this level perceives Chemistry as a difficult subject and hence run away from. Poor background of students in mathematical and some major geographical concepts, lack of appropriate instructional materials to illustrate and demonstrate the aspects being taught, Chemistry not given sufficient time on the school time - table to cover the wide topics and teachers lack the instinct for modeling of materials, but often rely on textbooks illustrations, have been adduced as some of the reasons for poor performance of students. Therefore Chemistry concepts cannot be taught in abstract, students need to conduct themselves in a group and exchange ideas in form of collaborative method on any given concept for them to understand better.

 

 

 

 

Purpose of the study

The main purpose of the study is to find out the influence of collaboration efforts of teachers and parents on the academic achievement of chemistry students in secondary schools in Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti State.

          Specifically, the study sought to;

i.                     Find out the influence of parents involvement on students academic performance in chemistry

ii.                    investigate the influence of teachers competence on students’ academic performance in chemistry.

iii.                  Find out attitude of students towards the learning of chemistry in secondary schools

iv.                 Determine the relationship between teachers and parents on students academic performance in Chemistry

Significance of the Study

The findings of the study will be significant in the following ways:

To the chemistry teacher, this study will generally help in guiding and directing the teacher in the preparation of the lesson plan in ensuring to add instructional skills/materials that will relate to students local practice in their home environment to ignite, stimulate, sustain and develop student interest thereby improving the achievement of the students in chemistry in particular and sciences in general.     It will demonstrate to the teachers the need to improvise on instructional techniques that will relate chemistry to students’ local practices in their home environment.

The study will help parents to give adequate sense of motivation to students as this inspire them to pay special attention to the learning of chemistry. It will also encourage parents to be more involved in the school work of their ward by providing them with all the necessary materials needed to encourage them

To the chemistry students, the study will be of immense value to them since it will bring to their notice that chemistry phenomena in their lessons are what they are locally used to in their environment, this will develop genuine interest in chemistry classes if influence and efficient learning is going to take place, for them to retain what is learnt better and improve on their achievements.

To the curriculum planner, the findings of this study will make it necessary now than before to specify appropriate instructional strategies for enhancing students’ interest and making the subject students centered. This will in turn help teachers/students develop interest in chemistry classes.

To the Government and Non-Governmental Organizations, the findings of this study will provide a different point of view if the issue of poor performance of students in chemistry and sciences in general is to be tackled holistically. It will emphasize the need for organizing policies, seminars, lectures, workshops, etc. that will be aimed at developing/improving students interest in chemistry for the nation to advance to a higher level in science and technology

To future researchers, the findings of this study will be a source of method, materials and reference for studies on similar topics.

Scope of the Study

The study on the influence of collaboration efforts of teachers and parents on the academic achievement of chemistry students in secondary schools will be carried out in Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti State.

Research Questions

Based on the above stated objectives, the following questions were formulated.

i.                   Is there any significant relationship between parents involvement and students academic performance in chemistry?

ii.                 Is there any significant relationship between teachers competence and students performance in chemistry?

iii.              To what extent do students’ attitudes towards chemistry affect performance?

iv.              What is the influence of collaboration efforts of teachers and parents on the academic achievement of chemistry students in secondary schools?

Research Hypotheses

The following hypotheses were framed to guide the study

i.                   There is no significant relationship between parents involvement and students academic performance in chemistry

ii.                 There is no significant relationship between teachers competence and students performance in chemistry

iii.              Attitude of students has no significant effect on students academic performance in Chemistry

iv.              Collaboration of teachers and parents has no significant influence on students academic performance in Chemistry.