Elimination of Distractions as Predictor of Senior Secondary Students’ Achievement in Physics in Taraba State Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated elimination of distractions as predictor of senior secondary students’ achievement in physics in Taraba State, Nigeria. The study was necessary due to concerns from researchers and other education stakeholders on poor achievement in Physics. Elimination of distractions has been identified as one of the factors responsible for students’ poor achievement. Two research questions were raised and one hypothesis was formulated to guide the study. The study adopted the predictive correlational research design. The population of the study was 8691 SS3 students in Taraba state. The sample was 390 drawn using simple random sampling. The Elimination of Distraction Questionnaire (EDQ) and Physics Proforma (PP) were used for data collection. Cronbach Alpha statistic was used to obtain a reliability coefficient of 0.76 through pilot testing. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions one and two while linear regression was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study indicated that the extent of elimination of distraction was moderate with grand mean 3.20 while the mean score (achievement) of the students was 54. Also, it was found that elimination of distraction significantly predicted academic achievement with adjusted R-square value of 0.65 with p=0.000. Based on the finding, it was concluded that elimination of distraction significantly predicts achievement of senior secondary III students in secondary schools. The study recommended among others that the state government and other education stakeholders should organize workshops, say once in a year for secondary school students in order to explain the tenets of elimination of study distractions so that students’ academic achievement and other goals of education can be affected positively.