Investigating the Effectiveness of Motivational Interviewing on the Academic Performance of Senior Secondary Students in Private Schools in Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

Large numbers of students in spite of having normal intelligence level have an inadequate academic motivation and do not show a good academic performance in different levels of education. The unmotivated students in classroom interaction with the teacher could be responsible for the observed poor performance of students and the widely acclaimed fallen standard of education in Nigeria. This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of motivational interview in promoting motivation among students in private secondary schools. It was aimed at answering the question: Does motivational interview have significant influence on academic performance of senior secondary SS 2 students in private schools? The study adopted the pretest-posttest experimental group design-two levels of independent variables (experimental groups and a control) and two levels of gender (male and female). The experimental group participants are given the MI intervention, while the control group participants received no intervention. A purposeful sampling procedure was adopted to obtain 120 participants from the two (2) sample secondary schools. Data were collected by employing English language Achievement Test (ELAT), Motivation strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and the Brief Academic Motivational Instrument (BAMI) as well as classroom observations. Both pretest and posttest scores were analyzed using the descriptive and t-test statistical analysis to test the hypotheses. Evidently, the experimental group that was exposed to motivational interviewing performed better than the control group that was exposed to traditional teaching method. This implied that with motivational interviewing combined with conventional teaching methods students performed with higher scores than when taught with conventional teaching method only. It is recommended that secondary school teachers should be trained on the effective use of motivational interview, MI skills and strategies for instruction through seminars, workshops and conferences.