Browsing by Author "Mugambi, Doyne"

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    Relationship between Dispositional Optimism and Academic Achievement of Form Two Students in Nyandarua County, Kenya
    (Nextgen Research Publication, 2024-09) Kamau, Anne; Kinai, Theresia; Mugambi, Doyne
    Persistent poor academic achievement in national examinations among pupils from public primary schools in Nakuru County has been considerably unsatisfactory and detrimental to the learners due to loss of educational and life rewarding opportunities. Educational research within the county with regard to the consistent huge failure rate in the past decade has majorly attributed the huge failure to school-related environmental factors. This is while little attention has been paid to psychological domains of the learners in this county. To address the continuous decline in performance, the study focused on dispositional optimism, an individual difference variable, that is considered to be key in influencing academic achievement of learners. The study was based on dispositional optimism theory. The study adopted convergent parallel mixed research design. The target population was 50750 standard eight pupils enrolled in all the 747 public primary schools in the county while the accessible population was 1364 class eight pupils from 16 public primary schools. The study sample comprised of 400 standard eight pupils selected from 16 public primary schools. Stratified and simple random which are probability sampling procedures and purposive sampling which is a non-probability sampling procedure were used in the selection of the schools and the participants. Questionnaires and interview guide were used to collect data. A pilot study was conducted among 30 class eight pupils to establish the validity and reliability of the research instruments. The study used both descriptive and relevant inferential statistical procedures to analyze the data. The results showed that dispositional optimism and academic achievement had a moderate, positive and significant correlation, r (366) = .31, p < .05. Qualitative results also revealed that high dispositional optimism was associated with high academic achievement and vice versa. The study recommends that teachers should be encouraged to build the capacity of the pupils in the primary schools so that they can be more optimistic in their academic endeavors for better achievement in academics.
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    Relationship between Parental Marital Status and Students’ Academic Performance in Day Secondary Schools of Dagoretti Sub District of Nairobi County, Kenya.
    (Msingi Journal, 2016) Mutisya, Rosemary Mueni; Kigen, Edward; Mugambi, Doyne; Migosi, Boaz
    Academic performance is one of the important aspects of a student’s life and therefore it is important to understand the factors that hinder or promote it. Various researches on factors affecting performance have been done, however there is little local research on how family structure affects academic performance. This study examined students’ academic performance vis-à-vis single and two parent family structures. It also investigated if there were any gender differences in academic performance as determined by parental marital status. The target population was form three students in day secondary schools of Dagoretti Sub District, Nairobi County, Kenya. The sample of the study consisted of 196 students drawn from five day secondary schools. The study used descriptive survey and ex post facto methodology. Simple random and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the schools and classes for the study respectively. Questionnaires and class achievement records were used to collect data. The data was analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), t-test and Chi-square test at significance level of 0.05. The study found no relationship between parental marital status and students’ academic performance as majority of students, regardless of family structure, performed equally poorly with a mean grade of less than ‘C’. The results showed that there was no difference in the academic performance of students from single and two parent families (P=0.776). Additionally, the results indicated that there was no significant difference in the academic performance of male and female students from single and two parent families (P=0.348) and altogether these outcomes established that there was no bearing between parental marital status and students’ academic performance (P=0.873). On the basis of this finding, it was recommended that parents and schools/teachers should provide necessary conduciveness to all learners to deal with the challenges they face at home and school, in order to obtain desired academic performance