Teaching/Learning of the Topic “Individual Obligation in the Family” and Students’ Performance of House Obligations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the impact of the “teaching of individual obligation in the Family” on the attitudes of SHS students towards the performance of household chores in their homes. The study was conducted at Tema Metropolis. The descriptive cross-sectional design was adopted for this study. The method was chosen because the study did not focus on causal effects in the population. Also, it was chosen because it is based on a representative sample of the population, the results can be generalized to the overall population from which the sample came. A sample size of 240 first year students and 260 second year students were used for the study, with questionnaires being administered to the sample. The researchers had 220 and 245 complete questionnaires from first years and second years respectively. The simple random sampling was adopted for this study. The main data collection tool used was the questionnaire, and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for the collation and presentation of the results. The results revealed that the main household chores performed by the respondents are running errands for their parents/guardians, cooking, ironing of clothes, baby-sitting, home repairs and maintenance, and hawking. In addition, the majority of respondents, irrespective of their academic year of study, agreed that it is their responsibility to perform house chores at home. The findings also showed that most of the respondents, especially the second year students, felt they are obliged to perform household chores. It was recommended that a forum should be organised to educate parents/guardians on how to nurture and engage their children in chores in order not to affect their academic performance. Finally, it was recommended that the Government of Ghana and the Ministry of Education should ensure that the topic “Individual obligations in the family” is moved from the second year syllabus to that of the first years so that students will get to know their obligations in the family at a very early age.

Keywords: Teaching/Learning, obligation, student, attitudes, house obligations

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-34-06

Publication date: December 31^st 2019