ASSESSMENT OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

ABSTRACT

This study assess parental involvement in the academic performance of children with special needs in Oredo local government area, Benin City, Edo State. The study adopted the survey research design. The population of the study was 286 which comprises of 143 Senior Secondary School one (SSS1) students and their parents from three (3) special schools in Oredo local government area of Edo State. The sample size was 112, 56 SSS1 learners and their parents (56) selected through simple random sampling techniques.Four research questions and one corresponding hypotheses guided the study. The Instruments used for data collection were two questionnaire titled "Parental Involvement in the academic performance of Children with Special Needs", and this instrument contains two sections. Section A is on demography data such as sex, age, highest academic qualification, religion, occupation and family size. Section B contains 15-items 4 options Likerd scale of Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Strongly Disagree (SD), and Disagree (D). The instruments were validated by three experts in the Department of Educational Evaluation and Counselling Psychology. Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient was used to yielded a reliability index of .815 and for subscale 3, 2 and 1 respectively , which was considered high enough. Frequency distribution, percentages, mean and Pearson Product Moment Correlation were used to analyzed data collected. Hypothesis was tested at the 0.05 level of significance.