Author(s): Babatunde ADEYEMI, A. A. IJIWOLE
The study examined the most meaningful causal model (home factors, school factors, teacher personal factors, career interest in Social Studies, attitude towards reflective inquiry, attitude towards social scientists, leisure interest in Social Studies, teachers’ attitude towards Social Studies and students’ attitude towards Social Studies) for students. It examined the direction as well as the estimate of the strength of the causal paths of the variables in the model. It also assesses the direct and indirect effect of the variables on the students’ attitude towards Social Studies. Finally, the proportions of total effects (direct and indirect) were determined. This is with a view of determining the appropriate students’ attitude towards Social Studies. The research design is an ex-post facto (non-experimental) type. The population for the study consisted of all the public junior secondary schools, Social Studies teachers and JSS 3 students in Osun state, Nigeria. Purposive sampling technique was employed in selecting 40 Junior Secondary Schools, 40 Social Studies teachers and 40 J.S.S. 3 students from Ife Geographical Zone of Osun State, Nigeria. Three instruments were constructed and validated before use for the study. They are: “School Questionnaire” (SQ), “Teacher Questionnaire” (TQ) and “Students Questionnaire” (SQ).The reliability coefficients yielded 0.76, 0.82 and 0.78 respectively. The three instruments were used to elicit information from both students and teachers respectively. Path analysis was employed for the analysis of the data collected. Among other results, it was found that out of eight (8) variables hypothesized to be influencing students’ attitude towards Social Studies, only four (4) (career interest in Social Studies, attitude towards reflective inquiry, attitude towards social scientists, and leisure interest in Social Studies) significantly determine students’ attitude towards Social Studies directly and indirectly. The remaining eleven (11) variables (home factors, school factors, teacher personal factors, and teachers’ attitude towards Social Studies) were found to exert such causal influence only indirectly. It is concluded that the school and the home have to be made stimulating for the students in order to make them have interest, and continue to have interest, in Social Studies
The Journal of International Social Research received 7760 citations as per Google Scholar report
