Relationship Between Self-Concept and Mathematics Achievement of Senior Secondary Students in Port Harcourt Metropolis

Abstract

This study explored the extent to which the self-concept of students in Port Harcourt relates to their Mathematics, and
General Academic Achievement. The population consisted of 6,478 senior secondary 3 (SS3) students from 13 state financed
senior secondary schools in Port Harcourt. Stratified random sampling was conducted to select 3 schools (one school each from
2 mixed schools, 5 boys’ schools and 6 girls’ schools). The sample for study was 300 SS3 students from the 3 randomly
selected schools. The instrument used for data collection was the Self-Description Questionnaire 111 (SDQ 111) developed by
Marsh (1992) which contains 13 self-concept facets out of which 2 facets (Mathematics, and General Academic) where adopted
for this study. The subjects were tested in Mathematics and scores obtained. The general average scores of the students on
their promotion examination from SS2 to SS3 were extracted from their school records. The Person’s Product Moment
Correlation analysis was used to answer the research questions, while the transformed t-test was used to test all the 3
hypotheses formulated for this study. The results of the tests indicated that Mathematics Self-concept is significantly related to
Mathematics Achievement, General Academic Achievement and General Academic Self-concept. The main implication of the
findings of this study is that self-concept and Mathematics, and General Academic achievement of students are so strongly
related that a change in self-concept facilitates a change in achievement. It was therefore, recommended that educational
programme designers and developers, teachers, parents and students should make self-concept development of students an
educational aim as important as academic achievement.