INFLUENCE OF CIVIC EDUCATION ON STUDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF DEMOCRATIC VALUES AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN OVIA NORTH EAST, EDO STATE

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the influence of Civic Education on Students’ Knowledge of Democratic Values and Attitude towards Political Participation in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo State. It assessed the relationship between students’ knowledge of democratic values in civic education and attitude towards political participation among secondary school students with a view of boosting positive political participation. The descriptive research survey design was adopted for the study to ensure a proper investigation of the relationship between the variables. The simple random sampling technique was also adopted to ensure proper representativeness of participants from public Senior Secondary Schools in Ovia North East, Edo State. Seven research questions were raised to guide the study and five hypotheses were formulated. Two hundred and twenty-two (222) senior secondary school students were drawn as the sample size for the study from ten randomly selected co-educational public senior secondary schools with five school each from both urban and rural areas. Data was collected with the aid of two self -structured research questionnaire titled ‘Knowledge of Democratic Value (KDV)’ and ‘Attitude Towards Political Participation (ATPP)’. The questionnaire was validated by three research experts and subjected to Cronbach Alpha Statistics. The reliability coefficient of 0.896 was obtained for Knowledge of Democratic Values using the Kuder Richardson 20 formula. Data were analyzed using the descriptive and inferential statistics of mean and standard deviation for research question 1 and 2. Hypothesis 1-5 were tested using the T-test statistics. All hypothesis were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed students have excellent knowledge of democratic values and their attitude towards political participation is high. Furthermore, there is no relationship between students’ knowledge of democratic values and their attitude towards political participation. Also, the study revealed that there is significant difference in the knowledge of secondary school students in rural and urban schools of democratic values. Those in urban area have good knowledge of democratic values compared to those in rural areas. The recommends that students in rural areas should be exposed more to the teachings of democratic values through introduction of civic education in their school subject in order to boost their knowledge of democratic values and political participation.