Relationship between Self-concept and Mathematics Achievement of Senior Secondary School Students in Port Harcourt. Unpublished Masters’ Degree Thesis

Abstract This study explored the extent to which the self-concept of students in Port Harcourt relates to their Mathematics, and General Academic Achievement. The population consisted of 6,478 senior secondary 3 (SS3) students from 13 state financed senior secondary schools in Port Harcourt. Stratified random sampling was conducted to select 3 schools (one school each from 2 mixed schools, 5 boys ’ schools and 6 girls ’ schools). The sample for study was 300 SS3 students from the 3 randomly selected schools. The instrument used for data collection was the Self-Description Questionnaire 111 (SDQ 111) developed by Marsh (1992) which contains 13 self-concept facets out of which 2 facets (Mathematics, and General Academic) where adopted for this study. The subjects were tested in Mathematics and scores obtained. The general average scores of the students on their promotion examination from SS2 to SS3 were extracted from their school records. The Person’s Product Moment Correlation analysis was used to answer the research questions, while the transformed t-test was used to test all the 3 hypotheses formulated for this study. The results of the tests indicated that Mathematics Self-concept is significantly related to Mathematics Achievement, General Academic Achievement and General Academic Self-concept. The main implication of the findings of this study is that self-concept and Mathematics, and General Academic achievement of students are so strongly related that a change in self-concept facilitates a change in achievement. It was therefore, recommended that educational programme designers and developers, teachers, parents and students should make self-concept development of students an educational aim as important as academic achievement