STUDENTS’ COMMITMENT AND INTERNAL-EXTERNAL CONTROL BELIEFS AS DETERMINANTS OF BIOLOGY ACHIEVEMENT IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

The study investigated students’ commitment and locus of control as predictors of achievement in biology in secondary schools in Awka education zone. Three research questions guided the study and three hypotheses were tested. Predictive correlation design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 4, 632 senior secondary year two (SS2) students offering Biology in Awka education zone out which 600 students were involved in the study. The instruments for data collection were Students’ Academic Commitment Questionnaire (SACQ) and Locus of Control Questionnaire (LOCQ) validated by three experts and the reliability of the instruments were established using Cronbach Alpha which yielded coefficient values of 0.77 for SACQ and 0.80 for LOCQ. The data obtained were analyzed using simple and multiple linear regressions. The findings of the study showed that a low positive significant relationship exists between students’ commitment and their achievement in biology with commitment predicting 2.7% of the variance in biology scores. A low positive significant relationship exists between students’ locus of control and their achievement in biology with locus of control predicting 0.8% of the variance in biology scores. Commitment and locus of control individually and jointly are significant predictor secondary school students’ achievement scores in Biology. The study recommended that biology teachers should ensure that students are highly commitment in the learning process and to the learning material by giving them engaging assignments and exercises as well as projects that requires high level commitment to achieve