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THE EFFECT OF GENDER, SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUSAND SCHOOL LOCATION ON STUDENTS

PERFORMANCE IN NIGERIAN INTEGRATED SCIENCE

D R . N .S . OKOYE

Department of Science EducationDelta State University,

Abraka - Nigeria

The study examined the effects of Gender, socio - economic sta-tus and school location, on Nigerian students performance inIntegrated Science. The method used for the study was a threevariable analysis of variance experimental design consisting ofthree independent variables at two levels each and one depen-dent variable. Six hundred junior secondary school three (J.S.SIII) students randomly selected from eight secondary schools inOkpe,Warri South and Uvwie Local Govemment Areas of DeltaState. Nigeria, were used as subjects for the study. These stu-dents were randomly assigned to eight groups of seventy - fivestudents per group. The results of the study show that there is asignificant interaction between gender and school locations onperformance in Integrated Science. The study also revealed asignificant interaction between school location and socio - eco-nomic status but the combined effect of gender and socio -economic status did not produce any significant effect on stu-dents performance in Integrated Science. The interaction ofgender, school location and socio socio-economic status wasfound to be significant. Hence, science educators are herebyenjoined to note the effects of these variables in science educa-tion so as to guide their teaching and students leaming of sciencein secondary schools.

Educators are incessantly concerned which are in short supply, but also becauseabout the need to improve academic higher achievement is particularly valuedachievement especially in the sciences, in a society which sets high premium onThe plethora of researches on students aca- academic success as the stepping stone fordemie achievement in the sciences, is a entrance into more prestigious occupa-testimony to this concem (e.g. Bajah, 1979; tions. (Ukeje, 2000).Babalola, 1979; Holliday, 1981; Nwagbo, The various biological differences in2001; Oyewole, 1982; Olayiwela, 1999; human make-up particularly between maleOkonkwo, 2000; Nwagbo, 2001, and and female human beings in most casesOkoro, 2005). This is as it should be have led to the suspicion that one sex maybecause the consequences of success or have a "leaming edge" over the other sex.failure in science subjects in schools are far Some people believe (without of coursereaching particularly in developing coun- any empirical support) that because mentries like Nigeria. This is not only because are regarded as the dominant and evena higher achievement especially in the sei- superior sex, they intrinsically have betterenees is the foundation for technical skills brains and leam much better than women

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(Mkpughe, 1998). This view tends to be inline with that of Rosenthal and Rubin(1982) together with that of Hyde (1981)that differences between male and femalestudents in intellectual performance inschools have been demonstrated on a widerange of variables Maccoby and Jacklin(1974) concluded that three cognitive gen-der differences were well established. Girlshave greater verbal, ability than boys, andboys have better visual spatial ability thangirls. Other research studies show thatobserved differences had not alwaysfavoured one gender. In Nigeria, consid-erable efforts have been expended ontrying to see how gender effects can beimplicated in the seemingly poor perfor-mance of girls in integrated science(Ukwuagwu, 2002). Unfortunately, theseresearch efforts have not produced any def-inite clear-cut picture from their findingsas they do not agree on the magnitude anddirection of gender differences in perfor-mance in Integrated science. The presentstudy tries to take a wholistic view of gen-der effects on integrated science by lookingat the effects of gender in relations to othervariables of socio - economic status andschool location on performance in Inte-grated science.

The location of a school has a signifi-cant effect on the academic performanceof the child. A school could be located inthe urban or rural area. Ezewu (1987) stat-ed the obvious that the location of a school(rural or urban) affects a child's ability tostudy and perform at the level expected ofhim. A stimulating school environmentarouses the student to learn especially inthe area of science. Hence the degree ofinterest a student derives from a learning

environment affects his performance.Mkpugbe (1998) noted that different

aspects of school environment inñuencestudents achievement. She further statedthat the individual students academicbehaviour is influenced not only by themotivating forces of his home, scholasticability, and academic values but also bythe social pressure applied by the partici-pants in the school setting. In Nigeria, mostrural based schools lacks enough qualifiedteachers, are poorly equipped and lackbasic amenities-all serving as inhibitingfactors of good academic performance.Combining school location and other vari-ables on science performance may or maynot produce the desired result. This studytherefore seeks to evaluate the effect ofgenders, socio-economic status and schoollocations on performance in Integrated sci-ence.

Socio-economic status of parents in oneway or the other affects the academic per-formance ofthe school children in science.The above fact was further justified in thestatement of Ezewu (1981) who stated thatthe socio economic status of a familyaffects the schooling of the children eitherpositively or negatively. He stated furtherthat the higher the socio-economic statusof the family, the more likely it will moti-vate their children to learn therebypreparing them for highly regarded voca-tions. "Children with rich parents havecertain needs physical and psychologicalwhich when met, contribute positively totheir academic performances" (e.g Avwa-ta, Oniyama and Omoraka 2001, Rüssel,1977). These needs may include a con-ducive reading atmosphere, good food, aplay ground, provision of books and other

Gender Effect.../563

material, and attendance at the best schoolsavailable. All these help to promote effec-tive learning and good performance inschools. Socio-economic status indices list-ed above in the presence of other variablesof gender and school location may or maynot give the desired results to performanceof students in science hence this studywhich sought to investigate the nature ofstudents performance in science in the pres-ence of the three variables of gender, schoollocation, and socio-economic status. Thisfinding is necessary so that any of thesethree variables will be viewed in a broad-er conceptual framework within the contextof science education. The study thereforerepresents and attempt to explore the rela-tionship between gender school locationand socio-economic status of students ontheir academic performance

Research ProblemA number of factors affect the academic

performance of students and thus may pos-itively or negatively influence studentlearning in science. Performance in sci-ence is a function of many causal indicescoupled with the fact that most studies deal-ing with performance in Integrated sciencehave tended to look at the variables of per-formance in isolation from each other plusthe fact that the problem of achievementin science education has been persistent, thepresent study was carried out to find theeffects of gender, school location, andsocio-economic status on students perfor-mance in Integrated science. Arising fromthis, the following research questions weregenerated to guide this study:1. Do male students from high socio-

economic background perform signif-

icantly better in Integrated science thanfemale students from low socio-eco-nomic background?

2. Do male students from urban secondaryschool perform significantly better inIntegrated science than female studentsfrom rural secondary schools?

3. Do students from the high socio-eco-nomic background living in urbancentre perform significantly better inIntegrated science than student fromlow socio-economic background livingin rural areas?

4. Do male students from high socio-eco-nomic background living in urbancenters perform significantly better inIntegrated science than female studentliving in rural areas from low socio-economic background?

Research MethodologyThe study utilized a "2x2x2" Factorial

analysis of Variance Design (Alii, 1996,Egbule, 2003) with one dependent vari-able (ie performance in Integrated science)and three independent variables of gender,school location and socio-economic sta-tus. Each of these independent variableshas two levels.

• Gender: Male and female.• School location: Urban schools and

Rural schools• Socio-economic status: Upper socio-

economic background students andLow socio-economic backgroundstudents.

Thus, the students will be randomlyassigned to three independent variableseach having two levels giving rise to aThree Variable Analysis of Variance.

The subject for the study were six, hun-


dred junior secondary school three (J.S.SIII) students randomly selected from eightsecondary schools in Okpe, Warri Southand Uvwie Local Government areas ofDelta State, Nigeria. These students wererandomly assigned to eight groups of sev-enty-five students per group. These studentwere already exposed to Integrated Sci-ence programming i.e teaching andleaming of Integrated Science for at leasttwo years at the time the study was con-ducted.

Three research instruments were devel-oped and used to collect the data for thisstudy. These are:1) Socio-economic status questionnaire;2) Programmed Instruction on Integrated

Science3) Integrated Science Achievement Test

(ISAT)The ISAT and Programmed instruction

on Integrated Science were adopted fromShaibu and Usman (2002), on two topicsof

i. Feeding in plants and animals; andii. Energy Conversion, selected from

the Nigeria Integrated Science Pro-ject Book 2. (1998). The reliabilityco-efficient of the ISAT Instrumentas given by Shaibu and Usman(2002) is 0.85

The socio-economic status question-naire was developed by the researcher witha scale designed to measure respondentfeelings and to seek information on theeducation level of student parents, theincome estimate of their parents, the occu-pational engagement of their parents, theplace of residence of these parents, num-ber of children in the family and theeducational level of the student of the fam-

ily. The responses of the student to theabove question formed the basis of cate-gorizing them into either low or highsocio-economic background. The ques-tionnaire was validated by five expertseach in the fields of sociology and demog-raphy.

The Programmed Instrument on Inte-grated Science used in this study wasdeveloped by the researcher as a modifiedform that given by Baldwin, (1973) andis the Linear Programming type. Markle(1964) advocated for the use of linearsequence during instruction. The pro-gramme here used both constructed andmultiple choice responses. Each frametreated a small but integral unit of the twotopics in Integrated Science as listed above,and there are series of such frames.

All the teachers from the eight sec-ondary schools teaching Integrated Sciencewere taught by the researcher about theprocedure for the administration of theinstrument.

ResultsThe results of the six hundred students

selected from the eight secondary schoolson the Integrated Science AchievementTest was analyzed in the table below. Alook at question 1,11, HI generated abovefor the study shows that these are cases offirst order interaction (ie the interactionbetween the two main variable of genderwith socio-economic background, genderwith school location, and socio-economicstatus with school location respectively).Therefore, a two way analysis of variancewas used to answer these questions asshown in table below.


The result in table 1 with FC < FT (i.e0.05< 0.82 above) shows that there is nosignificant interaction between gender andsocio-economic status on achievement inIntegrated Science. This implies that malestudents from high socio-economic back-ground did not perform significantly betterthan female student from low socio-eco-nomic status as far as this study isconcerned.

From the result shown in table 1 below,there is a significant interaction betweengender and school location (FC>FT,1.857>0.07). This means that this is asignificant difference between the perfor-mance of male students from urbansecondary schools and female studentsfrom rural secondary schools. Thus, malestudents from urban secondary schools per-formed significantly better in Integrated

science than female students from ruralsecondary schools.

The result shown in table 1 alsorevealed that there is a significant interac-tion between socio-economic status andschools location (FC > FT, 4.932 > 0.02).Thus, upper socio-economic backgroundstudent from urban centred secondaryschools performed significantly better inIntegrated science than low socio-eco-nomic background students from ruralbased secondary schools

A look at question four generated forthis study shows that this is a case of sec-ond order interaction (3-Way Interaction)i.e. the interaction between the three vari-ables of gender, socio-economic status andschool location. The result shown in table1 below revealed that there is a significantinteraction between these three variables

TABLE 1ANOVA SUMMARY TABLE FOR THE THREE INDEPENDENT VARIABLESAND STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN INTEGRATED SCIENCE

Source of variation

Main EffectsGenderS.E.S.Location

2-Way InteractionGender Vs S.E.SGender Vs LocationS.E.S. Vs location

3-Way InteractionGender Vs S.E.S VsLocation

ExplainedResidualTotal

Sum ofsquares132.515

.38877.41120,460

2.2270.0150.5551.473

2.1602.160

136.903176.771313.673

D.F.

3111

3111

11

7590599

Meansquares44.1720.38877.41120.460

0.7420.0150.5551.473

2.1602.160

19.558.299.524

FC

147.9301.301

259.24968.518

2.4860.051.8574.932

7.2337.233

64.497

Significance(Ft)0000.25000.00

0.060.820.070.02

0.000.00


(FC > FT, 7.933> 0.00). Thus, male stu-dents attending urban based secondaryschools from high socio-economic back-ground performed significantly better inIntegrated Science than female studentsfrom low socio-economic backgroundattending rural based secondary schools.

Discussions and ConclusionsThe result of this study revealed that

the effects of gender and socio-economicstatus working together does not producea significant interaction on student per-formance in Integrated science. This inline with the finding of Ukwungwu (2002)and Ezeliora (2004) and shows that gen-der differences irrespective of socio-economic background does not produceany significant difference in IntegratedScience performance.

The interaction of gender and schoollocation produced a positive significantrelationship on performance in Integratedscience. This means that male studentsattending urban centred secondary schoolswere better equipped with skills to per-form significantly higher than femalestudent coming from rural based secondaryschools. This implies that male studentattending urban centered schools are bet-ter placed with performance enhancingindices such as good schools that are wellstaffed and has well equipped library facil-ities all of which may be lacking in ruralcentered secondary schools. This is in linewith the findings of Avwata, Oniy ama andOmoraka (2001) and Mkpughe (1998) whoopined that in most cases male studentsresiding in urban centres of Nigeria tendto perform better in science subjects whencompared to their counter parts living in

rural areas. These indices of better per-formance is what may have beenresponsible for the superior performanceof male students used in this study. Thisfinding was earlier on elaborated by Okun-rontifa (1973) who observed that moststudents living in rural environments ofNigeria has significantly lower entrybehaviour than their urban centered coun-terparts.

The interaction of socio-economic sta-tus and school location also revealed apositive significant relationship in Inte-grated Science. This shows that a studentssocio-economic status and school locationdetermines his achievement in IntegratedScience. From this study, it has been seenthat upper socio-economic status male stu-dents attending urban based schoolsperform significantly better in Integratedscience than their lower socio-economicstatus females attending rural based sec-ondary schools. This is in agreement withthe view of Ukeje (2000) who opined thatin Nigeria, there is a well defined dichoto-my between urban and rural centres interms of educational facilities and socialamenities. Most teachers indeed strive toteach in urban centred schools. The aboveand other factors tend to limit the perfor-mance of students attending ruralsecondary schools in Nigeria

The effects of gender, socio-economicstatus and school location produced sig-nificant interaction on performance inIntegrated Science for the students usedin this study. Thus gender, socio-econom-ic status and school location are threeinteractive independent variables affect-ing Integrated science performance andshould be noted by all science educators


during the teaching and learning ofthe sub-ject.

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