Evaluation of Continuous Assessment and Accounting Students’ Academic Achievement in Senior Secondary Schools in Rivers

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Evaluation of Continuous Assessment and Accounting Students’ Academic Achievement in Senior Secondary Schools in Rivers

Abstract: The study evaluated continuous assessment and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State. A survey, causal-comparative research design was adopted. A population of 120 Accounting students was selected from three senior secondary schools in Rivers State. The entire population was used as sample because of its small size and no sampling technique was required from the population. Instruments titled ‘Continuous Assessment Questionnaire’ (CAQ) and ‘Accounting Students’ Academic Achievement Questionnaire’ (ASAAQ) was developed. The instrument was validated by experts in the field of Measurement and Evaluation, while the reliability of the instruments were established by the calculation of Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation to obtain an index of 0.72. Means and standard deviations were used in answering the research questions, while the Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation analysis was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. It was found that there is a significant relationship between assignment, teacher made tests, field projects and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State. The study thus concluded that continuous assessment or schoolsbased assessment should test the total growth of students in the non-scholastic areas and therefore should be built into the teaching-learning process. Therefore it was recommended that higher institutions of learning should train teachers on how to effectively supervise their students during field project writing, develop and construct teacher made tests, and that seminars, conferences and workshops should be organized by the government to really sensitize the importance of classroom assessment to the students using assignment.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. This is because, education represents a fundamental and an indispensable tool for industrializations and development of every nation which is moving through assessment of individual or learners in the classroom or even beyond (Ukuije, 2001). Assessment can also be said to be any procedure or activity that is designed to collect information about the knowledge, attitude, or skills of the learner or group of learners. In the view of Omoifo (2006), what is termed “assessment in many schools today is summative, final, administrative, rigorous and content-driven rather than formative, diagnostic, private, suggestive and goal oriented, as such can be regarded as grading.” Summative assessment entails the focus on final examinations by teachers, parents and students. Surprisingly, formative assessment is geared towards the consolidation of students‟ performance in the final examinations rather than inculcating students with problem solving, critical thinking, and life skills. When carried out as an ongoing process, assessment is known as Continuous Assessment (CA).

Continuous Assessment is a formative evaluation procedure concerned with finding out, in a systematic manner, the over-all gains that a student has made in terms of knowledge, attitudes and skills after a given set of learning experience (Ogunnyi, 2004). It is not simply continuous testing, continuous assessment does not solely depend on formal tests rather it is more than giving a test as it involves every decision made by the teacher in class to improve students’ academic achievement. In assessing accounting students’ academic achievement, continuous assessment may take different forms such as assignment, teachers made tests, projects, classroom presentations etc. Ogunnyi (2004) noted that continuous assessment is cumulative in that any decision made at any time about any student takes cognizance of the previous decision made about him. Continuous assessment also provides the student with maximum opportunities to learn and to demonstrate from time to time the knowledge, the skills and the attitudes that they have during the teaching-learning process.

Webb and Briars (2010) asserted that continuous assessment must be an interaction between the teacher and the students with the teacher continually seeking to understand what a student can do and how a student is able to do it. Yoloye (2011) also pointed out that continuous assessment is only a part of the field of educational evaluation. He further argues that continuous assessment is a method of evaluating the progress and achievement of students in educational institutions. This means that continuous assessment could be used to predict future students’ academic achievement in the final examinations and the possible success at the work place or on a particular job. By using the classroom as an assessment, the teacher is able to diagnose students problems, judge academic learning and progress, provides feedback and incentives thus place a student at the appropriate level. Thus, in secondary schools, assessment of accounting students’ academic achievement in the classroom has been an integral component of the teachinglearning process of accounting especially in secondary schools because there is much effort by the teacher to teach a lot of accounting content to students.

Theoretically, Ivan Pavlov (1929-1936) in his conditioning theory of Classical Conditioning concluded that a dog learnt to salivate whenever a bell was rung. He undertook many trials and each time the bell was sounded the dog salivated and food was simultaneously presented. The conditioning theory has therefore been adopted to inform this research because it was assumed that students in secondary schools obtained good grades whenever subject matter/content was taught, followed by many continuous assessment (trials) exercises. Pavlov suggested a Conditioned Response (CR) that refers to student’s reactions that develop as result of training/teaching in this study. A Conditioned Stimulus (CS) refers to incentives that evoke CR through training/teaching. Thus, it was assumed in this study that accounting students’ attainment of good grades was the Conditioned Response (CR), continuous assessment was the Conditioned Stimulus (CS), and teaching was the Unconditioned Stimulus (US). According to Onuka (2006), there is a need to use a variety of instruments to effectively measure accounting students’ traits and their results are used to assist the students to improve themselves. Lewin (2011) opined that over the years, various attempts have been made in many countries to improve the quality of examinations through the provision of continuous assessments. This is because continuous assessment is being used increasingly as a strategy to prepare accounting students for examinations. For instance, the results obtained from continuous assessment can be used to identify the students’ weak areas so that teachers can give them special support in those areas.

In other words, continuous assessment results can also inform decision-making in terms of determining as to whether students should be promoted from one class to another. Continuous assessment or schools-based assessment should test the total growth of students in the non-scholastic areas and therefore should be built into the teachinglearning process (Graume & Naidoo, 2014). This implies that helping students acquire the needed knowledge and skills would require changes in the public examination system and assessment techniques at the schools and classroom levels. In order to improve accounting students’ academic achievement, the assessment process had to be an essential ingredient of the overall instructional process. This assessment subsumes test, measurement and evaluation of the cognitive, psychomotor and effective skills (Brown, 2013, & Denga, 2017).

Accounting students’ academic achievement is accomplished through individual assessment of the student using examinations, teacher made tests, field projects, presentations etc. as such classroom assessment gives a more valid and reliable measure of their academic achievement in overall activity than a single examination. In contrary, assessment is a persistent problem in the process of teaching and learning which is why a single all round examination is not good enough and hence classroom assessment becomes imperative, that is why this study seeks to evaluate continuous assessment and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

Purpose of the Study: The aim of this study is to evaluate continuous assessment and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State. In specific terms, the objective of the study is to;

1. Evaluate the extent to which assignment relate to accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

2. Ascertain the extent to which teacher made tests relate to accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

3. Find out the extent to which field projects relate to accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

Research Questions: The following research questions were raised in the study:

1. To what extent does assignment relate to accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State?

2. To what extent does teacher made tests relate to accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State?

3. To what extent does field projects relate to accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State?

Hypotheses

The following formulated hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level.

(i) There is no significant relationship between assignment and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

(ii) There is no significant relationship between teacher made tests and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

(iii) There is no significant relationship between field projects and accounting students’ academic achievement in senior secondary schools in Rivers State.

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