Gender, Socio-economic status, Teacher qualification and their Interaction on Students' Retention Ability in Social Studies in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria

Abstract

This work sought to find out the effect of gender, socio-economic status, teacher qualification and their interaction on students' retention ability in Social Studies in Akwa Ibom State schools of Nigeria. Literature review was carried out on the variables directing the study. A total of 270 Upper Basic students were used for the study. The instrument consisted of thirty multiple choice objective questions and a questionnaire. The research design used for the study was a pretest post-test control group experimental design. One hypothesis was postulated for the study and tested at 0.5 level of significance using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The result of the analysis indicated that students' socio-economic status, teacher qualification and the interaction of teacher qualification with treatment significantly influenced students' retention ability in Social Studies. Specifically, the retention ability of higher SES students is significantly greater than that of medium SES students who in turn had significantly higher retention ability than low SES students. Based on these findings, recommendations were made.

Keywords: Gender, Socio-economic status, Teacher qualification, Students' retention ability, Social Studies.