The Impact of Parental Involvement on Students’ Attitude and Performance in Science in Batticaloa Educational Zone, Sri Lanka

Abstract

This study was carried out to find the impact of parental involvement on student’s attitude and their performance in science subject. A sample survey design was adopted for this study. The study was directed at the population of senior secondary students in the Batticaloa educational zone, in the Batticaloa district of Eastern Province in Sri Lanka. The sample was 400 students who studied in grade 12 and 13 science and mathematics streams and offering the physics and chemistry subjects. Ten 1AB schools from this research area were selected for the study. The 1 AB schools in Kalmunai zone were stratified into urban and semi-urban schools. 40 male and female students from the grade 12 and 13 were randomly selected with (late adolescent. To make the total of 400 respondents, 40 were selected from all 10 schools to constitute the sample for this study. The schools consist of 4 semi- urban and 6 urban schools was selected for this study. The students’ questionnaire, consists of section A which is made up of 24 questions, measuring the attitude of the students while the section B contain 18 questions for measuring the parental involvement (home influences) items. They were Likert scale item type questions, in which respondents choose from 5point scores such as strongly, agree to strongly disagree. Thirdly, information concerning the individual performance (in percentages) of students was obtained from their continuous assessment records of the school subjects concerning (physics and chemistry. Three null hypotheses were postulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance to the impact of parental involvement on student’s attitude and their performance in the science subject. Data collected on the study were analysed using inferential statistics which include; student analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson product Moment correlation coefficient. The result of the study showed that there is a significant relationship between students’ attitude towards performance of physics and chemistry and their parental involvement (p=0.012 and 0.026 respectively). And there is a significant relationship between performance of physics and chemistry and their parental

233 involvement (p=0.019 and 0.031 respectively). The correlation of coefficient between attitude and performance (physics and chemistry) are positively and significant (r=0.66, p=0.013 and r=0.53 and p=0.019 respectively). The phenomena observed were discussed in the light of prevailing conditions in most of the developing countries. Conclusively, home influence can be a tool to enhance school learning.