MEM Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing MEM Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Academic performance"

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    Effect of form four Students’ reading habits on academic achievement in public secondary schools in Kitui Central Sub-County, Kenya
    (Strathmore University, 2022) Mangelu, Grace Kalekye
    This study investigated the effect of form four students' reading habits on academic achievement in public secondary schools in Kitui Central Sub-County, Kenya. Form four students in secondary schools in Kitui Central Sub-County are performing poorly in the KCSE. The study objectives were: To examine reading habits of form four students in the home environment, to investigate the reading habits of form four students in the school environment, to assess the status of the libraries and to discuss the relationship between reading habits and academic performance of form four students in public secondary school students’ in Kitui Central Sub-County. The study adopted three theories of reading namely, Traditional Bottom Up-View influenced by the behaviorist’s psychology of the 1950s, Cognitive View developed in the 1960s in the cognitive sciences and the Schema theory based on the notion that experiences lead to creation of mental frameworks that help a reader make sense of new experiences. It used a descriptive research design with a sample size of 197 secondary school teachers and 335 Form Four students based on the Yamane Sampling formula. Primary data was collected using two sets of questionnaires (teachers’ and students’) containing open and closed-ended questions. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS version 21 and content analysis techniques respectively. The study established that the home environment was not promoting good reading habits in students, the school environment was supporting good reading and most schools in the region lacked library facilities and services. The study also revealed that there exists a significant positive relationship between reading habits and student academic performance. The study made the following recommendations to the various stakeholders in Kitui Central, Sub-County. The students should develop a positive attitude toward reading, be self-motivated, goal-oriented and focused to develop good reading habits for both academic and non-academic purposes. Parents must create an enabling reading environment at home, as well as promoting reading habits by purchasing books, allowing time for study, acting as mentors and role models, and supervising reading at home. The teachers in the school environment should develop students’ reading habits by supervision of reading activities, allocating reading lessons in the timetable and scheduling time for students’ private reading, among others. In conjunction with the national and local governments, the principals of public secondary schools in Kitui Central, Sub-County should construct or improve library facilities to ensure that students have access to appropriate reading and revision materials. The implementation of these recommendations would contribute to improving students’ reading habits and to enhancing their academic performance, thus increasing the likelihood that they qualify for university enrolment.