Influence of lecturers’ attitudes on academic performance of undergraduate students in Federal University Dutsinma, Katsina State – Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed the influence of lecturers` attitude on academic performance of undergraduate students in Federal University Dutsinma, Katsina State. The researcher sampled one hundred and six (106), three hundred level students from all the faculties in
the University using simple random sampling. The method adopted for the collection of the data was the designed questionnaire by the researcher. The use of the questionnaire serves as a means of eliciting data. The questionnaire has two sections, section one is demographic data, while section two is attitudinal items descriptions. These items set out to elucidate on the attitudes of lecturers on students’ academic performance to the teaching and learning process, to test the actual performance of the learners and to see how much the lecturers’ attitude influence the students’ performance. To ascertain the validity of the instrument, it was given to experts in the Department of Educational Foundations, Federal University Dutsinma. The experts made corrections which were taken into consideration. At the second look, the experts adjudged the instrument valid. To establish reliability, the instrument was administered on a representative sample of (20) respondents. The scores were subjected to Pearson Moment Correlation analysis which yielded coefficient alpha of 0.78 which shows that the instrument was reliable for the study. The analysis of the data is done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 23.0 version to run the analysis of the results at 0.01 level of significance. The main findings of the research indicates that lecturers’ attitudes have negatively deterred
undergraduate students’ academic performances with (r = -0.573, p < 0.01). Based on this finding, the study recommends that lecturers should obtain Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) so as to acquire the necessary teaching strategies/methodologies to enable them perform as trained teachers.