Influence of Scientific Home Background on Academic Performance of Chemistry Students

Abstract
This study investigate the influence of scientific home background on Chemistry students academic performance in Mbo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom, Nigeria . A correlation survey was the research design adopted by the researcher in the course of conducting this study. This was because the intention of this study is to investigate the influence between home and scientific background of chemistry students academic performance or achievement. A population size was 4,500 Chemistry students study Chemistry in Mbo Local Government Area and sample size was 100 Chemistry students selected randomly from different schools in Mbo Local Government . Learning styles questionnaire and Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT). The first instrument was tagged “Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) . The questionnaire was divided into two section A And B selection. Data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and independent t-test statistics to test null hypothesis at 0.05 significance . The result of the study shows that, the academic performance of Chemistry students from scientific home was better than the academic performance of Chemistry students from non-scientific home background . It was also found that, there was no significant difference between academic performance of male and female Chemistry students from scientific home background with those from non-scientific home background. Lastly, the results also shows that , the academic performance of Chemistry students from urban areas from scientific home was better than the academic performance of Chemistry students from non-scientific home background from rural area. The study recommends that, parents should ensure that they provide their children with scientific gadgets at home like television, library, aquarium, access to enable them do their homework at home and others scientific gadgets needed to encourage science, teachers should make sure that they link their teaching to scientific activities at home to encourage learners to appreciate the important of practicing science at home and use special measure to help those that are not from scientific home background and carry them along and government should ensure that schools are equipped with modern science apparatus to help favour students whose parent could not afford to provide scientific gadgets at home .