Impact of motivation and gender on students’ academic achievement and interest in government: A study of some selected secondary schools in Enugu State

Abstract

Education is a transformative tool for inculcating a relatively permanent change in behaviour, and every human behaviour is a product of motivation, either intrinsic or extrinsic, as motivation is the propelling force of action that results in achievement or underachievement. Academic achievement is an integer of the behavioural objective a subject teacher seeks to achieve in instruction. Consequently, this study ventured its inquiry on the impact of motivation and gender on students’ academic achievement and interest in government: a study of some selected secondary schools in Enugu State. Purposefully, the study investigated the difference in impact levels of motivation strategies and gender on the achievement and interest of students in government. It employed a quasi-experimental design and two sets of research instruments tagged Government Academic Achievement Tests Questionnaire (GAATQ) and Interest Inventory Scale on Government (IISG). Two hypotheses were developed to guide the study and were tested for significance at a 0.05 margin of error using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). It was found that gender is not the foremost pre-determinant of students’ achievement and interest in government. The study concluded that motivation and interest are the major determiners of students’ achievement in government and not gender. From the findings of the study, it was recommended that motivation strategies be robustly enforced in government instructional delivery. And that making government lessons interesting and interactive be prioritized through motivation since students perform better and achieve higher in the subjects they have more interest in than the one(s) they have less or no interest at all.