Home farm experience and academic performance of senior secondary school students in Agricultural Science in Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study sought to determine the relationship between home farming experience and the academic performance of senior secondary school students in Enugu State, Nigeria. The study adopted a correlational research design. The population of the study was 52,787 students in the 285 government secondary schools in the state. The sample size of 396 for the study was estimated using the Taro Yameni formula. The data for the study were collected using two sets of questionnaires comprising the Home Farm Experience Questionnaire (HFEQ) and the Students’ Academic Performance Questionnaire (SAPQ). The HFEQ contained 30 items while the SAPQ contained 10 items. The questionnaires consisted of 4-point rating scales of strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed and strongly disagreed with assigned values with weights of 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. The instruments were validated by 3 experts in Agricultural Education at Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The reliability of the instruments was 0.78 for HFEQ and 0.75 for SAPQ. The reliability was established through a pilot study on 30 students offering agricultural science in secondary schools in Abia State and the response was analyzed using Cronbach alpha coefficient. Data generated were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation for the research question and simple regression for testing the null hypotheses. Results showed a very strong relationship between home farm experience in animal production, crop production and soil conservation and the academic performance of agricultural science students in senior secondary schools in Enugu State. It was recommended that the state government through her Ministry of Agriculture should empower families with inputs to encourage them in their homestead farming since it has been revealed that it enhanced students’ performance in agricultural science.