PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON CAREER CHOICE AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN SOCIAL STUDIES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN UYO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Career plays a very fundamental and significant role in the life of the individual not only because they determine the pattern of income but also because they affect the individual personality and concepts in life. Career therefore is a choose pursuit, life work or success in one’s profession occupied by a person throughout his/her lifetime. In a nutshell, career is the totality of work one does in his life time and is person’s centred. It is of utmost importance to every individual as he or she prepares for the future. Career choice is something very hard to decide, especially as his life will depend on it. Harry, (2013) indicated that, career is the totality of experience through which one learns about and prepares to engage in work as part of his way of living. Career is an enjoying process that occurs over the life span and includes homes, schools and community. Every human being needs to do one job or the other to help contribute his quota to the development of the country.
Similarly, Ipaye (2010) asserted that there is need to discuss with one’s peer school counsellors, parents and teachers on the need to choose a life span work as “career convention” or “career conference”. However, career convention according to him is an instrument of career information. This occurs for a number of reasons, which includes:
- To stimulate career thinking and widen occupational horizon.
- To focus attention on particular jobs in order to help an individual crystallizes his preference.
- To create a situation in which parents can on one hand meet employers and discuss the opportunities they offer and on the other hand meet the career teachers or career officers with whom they can exchange views.
Work experience during industrial training or those experiences acquired during vocational education also aids the students in choice of career. This is a technique in which students do job under realistic conditions without payment, may help them choose a career to that effect. However, James (2014) opined that the influence home has on the child’s learning is the fundamental concepts of life. This influences most of the habits and basic adjustment established during school years. To highlights the fact that home and parents occupy the most important position in the child’s education. It should be stressed that work experience is not an attempt to find job for the students but an attempt to widen horizons of students and ease ultimate transition from school to work. This is usually based on the information given to the school by the parents, such guidance and information are necessary because most school children are students and are controlled by double standards, hypocrisy, truancy, materialism, dishonesty etc. The factors that may influence the choice of career includes: socio-economic factors; personal or family factors; cultural factors, which include schools, peer group, age and work experience.
The effect of parental influence on choice of career is both negative and positive this is due to: security factors; no usual hazards to health; assured steady income; certainty of continued employment; career or occupational satisfaction; prestige; and social rewards. To increase students interest and ability to use his hands and brains, parents, must be involved to give desired assistance/guidance to the students.An investigation on parental influence on career choice and student’s performance, has revealed that parents who interact with their children at home in a variety of ways shows interest in what they do or say tend to encourage their children towards better results on certain subjects in school. On the other hand, children whose parents show little or no attitude or attention to their studies at home, do not motivate and encourage better academic performance in most subjects which Social studies is included.
Career choice has become one of the most difficult decisions in the life of students. Thus career choice is capable of determining and individual’s social status, income and character, his lifestyle and so on. Therefore, there is need to counsel students to become vital because students’ years are marked by the development of the feeling of independence, self-reliance and self-esteem vocational assistance and occupational information from parents. The benefits accompanying parental influence on career choice of their children cannot be over-emphasized, this is because it enables students’ combines’ subject that will lead then to fulfill their career potentialities such as personality traits, interest, aptitude and their abilities.
Moreover, career choice has influence the decisions in the life of students. The career choice of the students make the students to see social studies as an art, social science or commercial subject which is mainly for the students who are going to the field of social sciences and it is capable of determining and individual’s students’ participation in class, character, his lifestyle and academic performance. Consequently, there is need to counsel students become vital because students’ years are marked by the development of the feeling of independence, self-reliance and self-esteem vocational assistance and occupational information from parents. This accompanying parental influence on career choice of their children is to assist the students to combines subjects at the senior secondary school level that will lead the student to fulfill their career potentialities such as personality traits, interest, aptitude and their abilities.
In addition, these parental influences on career choice of their children helps minimize confusion and frustration that arise from unemployment, inability to locates, acquire and maintain jobs. Guidance counselor assists students in making intelligent decisions and effectuates capability. Prominent among the services rendered by guidance personnel in secondary schools are information, appraisal referral, counseling, placement, and follows up service for the proper guidance of students on career choice and subjects combination also, parents play a significant role in the determination of the career of their children which assist the children in the selection of subjects according to areas that they indicate interest to participate after their junior secondary education. Against this background, therefore, this study sought to assess parental influence on career choice and students’ academic performance in social studies in secondary schools in Uyo Local Government Area.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
It is assumed that with the increasing complexities in the society, industrials and technological development all going hand in hand, the succeeding generation will find it difficult to adjust themselves both to the society, work, family and schools. Failures in proper adjustment to all the factors mentioned could affect maladjustment as well as personal problems in developments.
A number of factors influence the setting of career goals and aspirations by human beings such factors include interest, aptitude, and reward level of responsibility, social needs and status ego satisfaction. Parents who had prestigious careers in mind discouraged the offering of non-prestigious careers. This is done without regard to the fact that an individual is endowed with certain potential, aptitudes and interest for career choice. Furthermore, parents sometimes force their children too much by getting them fulfill some lost grounds where the parents failed to achieve their aims and ambitions or make their offering contribution to certain societal needs and goals.
Owning to the complex nature of Nigerian society, the counseling programme provided by parents at home to their children has assumed a wider role in the educational development of their children and in the present-day students’ selection of subjects is based on the process of helping individuals understand themselves which will lead to the better understanding of other aspects of their live. Furthermore, since parental influence on career choice of their children influence the children selection of subjects in the senior secondary education, there is need therefore to assess if parental influence on career choice rendered has actually provide adequate motivation for students’ academic performance in social studies in secondary schools in Uyo Local Government Area.
