Creativity As Predictor of Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement in Mathematics In Anambra State

Creativity is a strong indicator and facilitator for effective learning. The study aimed to explore the students’ creativity as a predictor of academic achievement in mathematics in Anambra State The study adopted a multiple regression predictive design. The population of the study comprised 21,204 SS II students from which a sample of 1500 was drawn. The multi-stage procedure was used to select the sample. A standardized research instrument such as; the Students’ Epstein Creativity Competencies Inventory developed by Epstein (ECCI) was used for data collection. Students’ mathematics achievement scores from the state-wide promotion examination were used to represent mathematics achievement.  Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the reliability of the items in the instruments.  Reliability indices were found to be .89 for the personal trait, .64 for process, .85 for press, and  .71 for product respectively. The overall score of the coefficients is .77 which made the instruments fit for the study. Four research questions and three hypotheses were formulated for the study. The standard multiple regression was used to analyze the collected data. The t-test for r, F-test, and test of significance for β, were used to test hypotheses at a .05 level of significance. Findings showed that students’ academic achievement scores were significantly predicted by the product scores. It was also, recommended that teachers and parents should encourage their children to adopt creativity as an adaptive behavior to motivate their learning potential to achieve academic progress more meaningfully. This is because these results document the vital influence and impact which creativity has on students’ learning outcomes

Social Goal Orientation, Academic Engagement and Creativity as Predictors of Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement in Mathematics in Anambra State, Nigeria

Social goal orientation, academic engagement and creativity are strong indicators and facilitators for effective learning. The association among these variables to jointly predict academic achievement has been vague and nebulous in the field of educational psychology. The study aimed to explore the students’ social goal orientation, academic engagement, and creativity as predictors of academic achievement in mathematics in Anambra State. Four research questions and three null hypotheses were formulated for the study. The study adopted a predictive correlational design. The population comprised of 21,204 SS II students from which a sample of 1560 was drawn using probability sampling procedure. Standardized research instruments such as; Social Goal Orientation Questionnaire (SGOQ), Students’ Academic Engagement Questionnaire (SAEQ) and Epstein Creativity Competencies Inventory (ECCI) developed by Epstein were used for data collection. Students’ mathematics achievement scores from the state wide promotion examination were used to represent mathematics achievement. Cronbach’s alpha was used to determine the reliability of the items in the instruments. A reliability indices were found to be .88, .82, and .92 for SGOQ, SAEQ and ECCI respectively. These scores made the instruments fit for the study. The standard multiple regression was used to analyze the collected data. The standard multiple regression was used to analyze the collected data. The research question 1 was answered using multiple regression. The research question 2 was answered using unstandardized β. The research question 3 was answered using adjusted R2. The research question 4 was answered using standardized β. The null hypothesis 1 was tested using F-test for regression model. The null hypothesis 2 was tested using t-test for adjusted R2. The null hypothesis 3 was tested using t-test for β at .05 level of significance. Findings showed that students social orientation, academic engagement and creativity scores yielded an adjusted R square of .007. This implies that predictors accounted for about 0.7% of the variance scores in academic achievement. Also, the analysis of variance indicated that the regression equation was significant in predicting academic achievement in mathematics. This implies that at least one of the independent variables significantly predicted academic achievement in mathematics. Based on these findings, it was recommended that students should consider social goal orientation, academic engagement and creativity as adaptive motivational variables that have jointly predict academic achievement.&nbsp

Relationship between Success Attributions and Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Anambra State, Nigeria

The study focused on the relationship between success attributions and academic achievement of secondary school students in Anambra State. Six research questions and six null hypotheses guided the study. Using a multi-stage sampling technique, the study adopted a correlation design with a sample size of 600 senior secondary two students drawn from the population of 11,417 co-educational students. The instrument for data collection was the Students’ Attribution Style Questionnaire. Students’ Achievement Scores were used to obtain students’ academic achievement. The reliability of the instrument was established using the Cronbach Alpha method, which yielded a reliability of .84. The Pearson Product Moment correlation was used to answer the research questions, while the t-test of the significance of the correlation was used to test the null hypotheses at a .05 level of significance. Findings from the study revealed a medium positive correlation between attributions and academic achievement scores of students with internal success attributions. Also, the finding revealed a significant relationship between attributions and academic achievement scores of students with internal success attributions. Based on these findings, it was recommended that teachers always emphasize the effort to adopt the success attribution approach in the learning process as the basis for students’ success in their academic activities and also improve the learning environment to minimize environmental constraints