School and students’ factors as predictors of senior secondary school students’ academic performance in physics in Ekiti State, Nigeria

It appears there is a decline in the performance of secondary school students in physics in the past years. The study investigated the influence of school and students’ factors as predictors of students’ performance in secondary school physics. The study employed an ex-post facto research design of survey research method. Simple random sampling was used to select four local government areas from the sixteen local government areas in Ekiti State. Simple random sampling was also used to select twelve (12) schools from the four local government areas. One physics teacher was randomly selected from each of the twelve schools used. The physics students were selected at random at the discretion of the physics teacher in each of the schools. A total of four hundred and fifty (450) students were used for this study, making it a total of four hundred and sixty-two (462) participants. Five instruments were used to gather information from the respondents which are; Students’ Parental Influence Questionnaire (SPIQ), School Environment Questionnaire (SEQ), Physics Instructional Materials Checklist (PIMC), Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) and Physics Achievement Test (PAT) with reliability coefficients of 0.74, 0.68, 0.65, 0.82 and 0.94 respectively. Data collected were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. The result reveals that four of the school and students’ factors (availability of instructional materials, teachers’ qualification, background in mathematics and parental socioeconomic status) have a positive influence on students’ performance in physics while the remaining two factors (school environment and parental motivation) have negative correlation on students’ performance in physics. Also, the result revealed that students’ background in mathematics significantly predicts students’ academic performance in physics. The study concluded that physics teachers should endeavour to teach prerequisite mathematics concepts in physics before engaging them in real physics teaching as this will allow for meaningful understanding and integration of mathematics concepts embedded in physics contents.