Effect of Forced Interest and Academic Discipline on Second Year Science Students’ Academic Performance in Colleges of Education, South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

The study aimed at exploring the effect of forced interest on academic achievement of second year NCE students using academic discipline as a moderating variable. An expo-facto research design of a 2 X 3 factorial matrix was adopted for the study on a population of all second year (200 Level) science students in Colleges of Education in the south-western part of Nigeria. A total of purposively and randomly selected 248 students from six Colleges of Education took part in the study while a self-designed questionnaire tagged Forced Interest and Academic Discipline Questionnaire (FIADQ) was the main instrument used for data collection. Data collected were analysed with ANCOVA and Scheffe Post-hoc statistical tools. Finding of the study reported a no significant main effect of forced interest on the academic achievement of students while there was a significant main effect of academic discipline on academic achievement of second year NCE students. Students of Biology discipline performed significantly better than their counterparts in Physics. Physics discipline recorded the lowest GPA. Based on this finding, it is recommended among others that Nigerian Ministry of Education should come up with a policy that irrespective of students’ first choice, any other available relevant course should be given to them provided they cannot be offered admission with their courses of first choice.