CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to Study
Academic achievement is a major issue among students, teachers, parents, school administrators, and the community at large. Attempts have been made by researchers to unravel the complexities surrounding academic achievement. Psychologists have put forward a lot of reasons why these disparities in achievement exist. A lot of attention had been paid to external factors such as type of school, teaching methods, school location, instructional materials, teachers experience, and so on (WAEC, 2005). Many spend lots of money in order to secure good schools either for their children or themselves and those who can afford it even invest on education abroad as they believe this will enhance achievement, and which in turn gives an added advantage in terms of securing gainful employment. Opinions vary as to why some students excel academically while others appear to be underachievers. Many psychologists have consistently attempted to identify the major predictors of individual academic achievement. Factors such as intelligence, self-concept, gender, study habit, maturation, home background, amongst others, just to mention a few, have been extensively explored as being responsible for academic achievement, especially in secondary school students. Other factors that have been researched into in the past include: child rearing patterns, peer group influence, socio-economic background and learning environment. Another major factor that is believed to be responsible for academic achievement in students is their personality traits. How true is this? Traits Theorists have tried to identify the major traits that characterize personality. Notable among these are Sigmund Freud in the early 1900’s, Gordon All port (1961), Cattell (1967), Hans Eysenck (1985) Feldman (1994), McCrae and Costa (1987) anda host of others. Personality has been defined in many ways by many psychologists who wrote on the concept. According to Feldman (1994) in Daminabo (2008), Personality is the sum total of the characteristics that differentiates people, or the stability of a person’s behavior across different situations. In other words it means those qualities the individual is noted for. Traits on the other hand are “enduring dimensions of personality characteristics which differentiates people from one another” (Colman, 2003 in Daminabo 2008). Traits are therefore the sum total of stable characteristics in a person across different times and situations, which make him or her unique or distinct from others. This agrees with the definition by Mischel 1981, (in Agbakwuru, 2000: 23) which refer to personality traits as consistent differences between the behaviors characteristic of two or more people. It is also defined as “any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another” (Guliford, 1959 in Agbakwuru 2000: 23).However, there has been an increasing interest in the big five personality traits and the role they play as regards academic achievement of students. Of particular interest is the role that these traits play in the academic achievement of secondary school students. These traits, popularly known as the ‘Big Five’ include conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience, extraversion and locus of control. The acronym CAOEL is used to describe them. These personalitytraits affect academic achievement in students, either positively or negatively.
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