Character Education and Pro-Social Behaviour of Secondry School Students in Ikpoba Okha Local Government Area, Edo State

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the connection between character education and pro-social behaviour among secondary school students in Ikpoba Okha Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria. Two research questions were posed and two hypotheses were developed and test at .05 level of significance. The study adopted a correlational research design, with a population that consisted of 6,589 senior secondary two (SS2) pupils from the 21 public secondary schools in the study area. Taro Yamene sampling equation was used to choose a sample size of 377 SS2 students for the study. Out of 21 schools, ten (10) public secondary schools were chosen at random for the study. Therefore, respondents were chosen for instrument administration based on a random sample balloting procedure for each sampled school. The researchers developed an instrument titled “Character Education and Students Pro-social Behaviour (CESPBQ)”, this was used to collect data with an overall reliability coefficient of .78 for character education and .83 for items measuring students’ pro-social behaviour. Of the 377 copies of the questionnaire distributed, 7 copies were not utilized for data collection and analysis as they were wrongly filled by some of the respondents. As a result, just 370 of the questionnaire remained, which were utilized for data analysis. Using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) statistics to analyse the data, the study conclusion showed that secondary school students’ pro-social behaviour, honesty, and self-discipline have high positive and significant relationship. The researchers came to the conclusion with a recommendation among others that, teachers and parents, through effective relationship and supportive bound, should model desirable character traits in young ones. As such, laudable character traits would encourage students to display honest conducts in schools.

Keywords: Character Education, Pro-Social Behaviour, Honesty, Self-Discipline.