Response to questions and Pupils Academic Performance in Home Economics

Some authorities regard attitude towards Home Economics as just a like or dislike for
Home Economics, while others extend the meaning to embrace beliefs, ability, and usefulness of
Home Economics. Considering attitude towards Home Economics from multidimensional
perspectives, it interprets pupils attitude towards Home Economics as a more complex scenario
characterized by the emotions that one associates with Home Economics, ones beliefs about
Home Economics and how one behaves towards Home Economics (Hart, 1989). This attitude
poor response to questions is reflected by the fact that pupils may shy away and would always
try to avoid Home Economics.
Pupils with poor academic performance have a more negative attitude towards learning
and believe that school and learning will not help them being successful in the future (Candeias,
Rebelo & Oliveira, 2010). The negative attitude of pupils’ toward home economics may have
adverse effect on their academic achievement. On the sources of pupils’ attitude towards a
particular course, Yusuf (2014) citing Onoshkpopokaiye (2011) stated that pupils draw from
teachers’ disposition to form their own attitude which may eventually affect their learning
outcomes.
Several research studies support the fact that pupils’ success in Home Economics
depends upon the learners’ attitude in responding to questions towards the subject as this
determines their ability, willingness to learn, choice of action and response to challenges. It
determines the level of engagement, interest, personal effort without which one can hardly
perform (Garden & Smith, 2001). Negative dispositions induces tendencies of fear, anxiety and
stress where one resorts to other non productive practices which finally prevents them from
experiencing the richness of Home Economics and many approaches that could be used to
develop competencies in the subject. Consequently, the pupil exhibit low motivation, decreased
level of participation, boredom and behaviour problems including class or lesson avoidance
.This is in fact, evident when the teacher is doing his best presentation in class, but the pupil may
seem to be alienated and aloof (Furinghetti and Perkhonen, 2002).
“Nicolaidou & Philippou (2003), showed that negative attitudes are brought about by
frequent repeated failures or difficulty in dealing with home economics tasks which may persists
if not remedied. Attitudes towards Home Economics become more negative with the rise school
level due to pressures or too demanding tasks and increase in workloads etc. Mato & De La
Torre (2010), in a study with primary school pupils showed that those who are better
academically have more positive attitudes towards Home Economics than those with low
academic performance hence repeated failures in Home Economics leads to unfavourable
attitudes. Pupils’ attitude towards of learning Home Economics may be considered as both input
and outcome variable as attitude towards the subject can be related to educational achievement in
ways that reinforce higher or lower performance.