Relationship between Political Education Concepts in Civic Education on Students’ Knowledge and Attitude to Political Participation in Edo State

Abstract

The study looked into how well-versed pupils were in civic education concepts and how they felt about participating in politics in Edo State. Due to Nigeria’s ongoing election irregularities and several other electoral transgressions, which give the appearance that civic education has not had a significant influence, the study became imperative. Six research questions were posed, four of which were hypothesized, to help direct the investigation. For this investigation, a descriptive survey design was used. Using the multi-stage sampling technique, 840 students were selected among 74,440 public Junior Secondary School I-III students in the Edo South Senatorial district. Two instruments were used for the study, an achievement test titled, ‘Knowledge of Political Education Test’ and a Likert scale designed to collect information from the respondents on, ’Students’ Attitude to Political Participation’. For research questions 1 and 2, data was gathered and analyzed using the mean and standard deviation. For hypotheses 1 through 4, Pearson’s “r” was used to determine significance at the 0.05 level. The study’s conclusions showed that pupils have a strong understanding of political education ideas and a favorable outlook on getting involved in politics. It also showed tha’ t“e”e is a strong correlation between students' attitudes toward voting, voter registration exercise, the rule of law, a’d “h” electoral process and political education. The study recommends amongst others that Civic Education curriculum contents be enhanced to accommodate more of political education concepts. Keywords: Political Education, Civic Education, Students’ Knowledge, Political Participation