SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Science Education

CONTRIBUTORS:

Eze, C.A;
Okoli, J.N;

ABSTRACT:

Chemistry is considered a key foundation for scientific knowledge required for problem solving in an environment. This study was necessitated by the persistent poor students’ achievement in chemistry in Nigeria. The purpose of this study was to examine academic self-efficacy, attribution styles and test anxiety as predictors of chemistry achievement of secondary school students in Imo State, Nigeria. Fourteen research questions and 10 null hypotheses guided the study. Predictive correlational research design was used. The population of 16,302 comprised of all the senior secondary school class two students in the 295 public secondary schools in the six education zones in Imo State. A sample size of 875 was drawn using three-stage sampling procedure. Three instruments were used to collect data for this study, namely; Morgan-Jinks Student Self-Efficacy Scale (MJSSES), Attribution Scale for Students (ASS), Sokan Test Anxiety Scale (STAS). Also the participants’ chemistry achievement scores used was the cumulative average score of three terms. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for MJSSES, ASS and STAS yielded 0.81, 0.71 and 0.78 respectively. Data were collected based on at-the-spot method. Descriptive and inferential statistics including frequency count, percentage, simple and multiple linear regressions via SPSS version 20. The findings revealed that most of the students possessed high academic self-efficacy and attributed both their success and failure to self-effort. More than half of the students are anxious about chemistry achievement test. Secondary school students in the study area had an average achievement score in chemistry. It was found that self-efficacy, attribution styles (luck and teacher) and test anxiety positively and insignificantly predicted chemistry achievement while self-effort attribution style negatively and insignificantly predicted chemistry achievement irrespective of gender. More so, the three predictor variables were significantly contributed to chemistry achievement when combined together. It was also found that among the three variables, academic self-efficacy had the highest predictive power. It was recommended among others that parents and other educational stakeholders should work together to enhance the students’ academic self-efficacy since the findings indicated that it was the best predictor of chemistry achievement.