SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Educational Foundation

CONTRIBUTORS:

Okeke, A. N;
Unachukwu, G.C;

ABSTRACT:

The study was embarked on because parents have some expectations for the academic achievement of their adolescents. Parents expect their adolescents to achieve high academically. Unfortunately, many of these adolescents fail to meet these parental expectations by their poor performance in examinations. While some parents make external attributions for their adolescents’ performance, some others make internal attributions to explain such poor performance. This study investigated the relationship between parental expectations, attributions and academic achievement of their adolescents in the South East of Nigeria. The study was guided by four-research questions and four research hypotheses. The sample size was 1597 parents (676 males and 921 female parents) selected using multi-stage sampling technique. The design of the study was correlational survey method. The instrument for data collection was the questionnaire of which there are two categories: Parental Expectations and Academic Achievement of their Adolescents and Parental Attribution and Academic Achievement of their Adolescents. Parental expectation questionnaire solicited the expectations parents have for the academic achievement of their adolescents while parental attribution questionnaire solicited for parental attributions on the academic achievement of their adolescents. Parental expectation questionnaire was first given to parents before the students took their Basic Education Certificate Examination while Parental attribution questionnaire was later given after the students’ performance (result) were released. The data were analyzed using the mean score and Pearson product correlation to answer research questions while the hypotheses were tested using t-test analysis at 0.05 level of significance. The major findings include: Parents have high expectations for the academic achievement of their adolescents. There was positive relationship between parental expectations and academic achievement of their adolescents. Parents attribute the academic achievement of their adolescents to effort (internal) and luck (external) causes. There was a significant relationship between parental attributions and academic achievement of their adolescents. Based on the findings, recommendations were made and they include: Parents should have realistic expectations for the academic achievement of their adolescents. Parents should attribute the outcome of their adolescents’ academic achievement to internal causes.