CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Academic performance is a factor found among students and is it a function of many factors, some of which are within the student and the class room while others are out of the class room while academic objectives are paramount to students’ success in school attainment, goal commitment is sensitive to factors like hope and specifically agency hope and confidence in one’s abilities. Students’ engagement is the ability of an individual to be in control of his or her own learning which means being accountable for all the facets of learning such as setting goal and self-monitoring process (Little, 2007). In one of the study done in United States of America, Derrick, Ponton, Confessor & Carr (2007) argued that a learner’s commitment is a manifestation of passion, want, resourcefulness, initiative and persistence in learning. Traditionally, learning can in people who assume that success is totally dependent on an individual’s personal efforts. A learner’s commitment as related to teachers method in which the learner is accountable for identifying and addressing gaps in their knowledge.
Nowadays, a good number of students ignore and see the aspect of being responsible and accountable for learning and as such they face stress, unknown and use unproductive learning strategies. Being discovered that most students in public schools go to school with no précised academic objective, no forecast for there tomorrow and may resort to non-academic activities. When you look at some countries closely, you will discover that there is still low academic achievement among secondary school students as the mean grade is always below the expected grade entry point of University. Low academic performance in mathematics results in class repetition, poor retention rate, truancy, school dropout and hopelessness in life. In some more serious cases, teachers have been abused by parents;they have been prevented from entering school compounds when students seem not to perform well in national examinations while some students have committed suicide. Howbeit, in a much as such challenges have been pointed out, it would be of paramount help to introduce and institute, let them know the eects of learner commitment on academic performance of secondary school students.
The study was centered on Edwin Locke & Gary Lotham’s (1990) goal setting theory which states that the procedures of setting goals and targets permit an individual to focus in other to make available a sense of direction and also helps one to attain goals without distraction. The theory is linked to a learned style of goal directed thinking (autonomous) which is fostered by both pathway and agency thinking (Locke & Lotham, 2002). According to the theory, so long as a person is committed to the goal, has the requisite ability to attain it, and does not have conflicting goals; there is a positive, linear relationship between goal difficulty and task performance. The engagement has two structures which is what pushes it to perform a certain action and turning motivation in visible behaviour. Also, it has been established that learner right, determination, involvement is the character of individual who display intentional behaviour with respect to their learning, free learners exercise self-control skills and impact their personal life through processes linked to freedom, power and change. Christian (2013) opined that self-regulated learners are lively searchers and refineries of information and they provoke, supervise and elaborate learning through setting goal. The study therefore discovered that learners can show increase in cognitive, meta-cognitive functioning and self-efficacy through involvement with schemes that reinforce self-regulated learning in problem based learning.