Influence of school disciplinary styles on students’ self-esteem and interest in learning in nsukka educational zone of enugu state

Thesis Abstract

This study was designed to find out the influence of school disciplinary styles on students’ self-esteem and interest in learning in Nsukka Education zone of Enugu state. The study adopted ex-post facto research design. The population for the study was all the senior secondary (SS2) students in public Secondary Schools in Nsukka Education Zone numbering 5,488 out of which 540 students were randomly sampled for the study. The sampled students were 227 in Nsukka Local Government Area; 240 in Igbo Etiti Local Government Area, and 73 in Uzo Uwani Local Government Area. Four research questions and four null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The instrument used for data collection was school disciplinary styles questionnaire (SDSQ) students’ self-esteem questionnaire (SSSQ) and interest in learning questionnaire (IILQ). The instruments SDSQ, SSSQ and IILQ were given to experts who validated the items to ensure face validity. The instruments were trial-tested to determine the internal consistencies using Cronbach Alpha Statistic, the Alpha Coefficient values of the instruments yielded the following ADS = 0.73, DDS = 0-74, LDS = 0.65, IDS = 0.78, SSE = 0.78 and IIL = 0.81. The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test at 0.05 level of significance. Major findings of the study include Students who adopted authoritarian and demonstrative disciplinary styles have a high self-esteem while students that adopted laissez-faire and indifferent disciplinary styles have a low self-esteem. The students who adopted authoritarian and demonstrative disciplinary styles had higher mean score in their interest in learning than students who adopted laissez-faire and indifferent disciplinary styles. The difference in mean response is seemly negligible, indicating that gender does not have some influence on students’ self-esteem. The r difference in mean response is seemly negligible, indicating that gender does not have some influence on students interest in learning. There is no significant influence of gender on students’ self-esteem. There is no significant influence of male and female students’ in their disciplinary styles.