Parental Expectations and Attitude to Academic Subjects as Correlates of Career Aspirations among Secondary School Students in Sokoto Metropolis, Sokoto, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between parental expectation, attitude to academic subjects and career aspiration among senior secondary school students in Sokoto Metropolis. A descriptive research design was adopted in this study. Purposive sampling procedure was used to select 10 out of the 21 Senior Secondary Schools in Sokoto Metropolis. 346 students were selected using Research Advisor table of determining sample size in a given population. Three instruments were used for data collection in this study namely:  Adopted Version of Boyi Parental Influence Questionnaire to measure parental expectations on career aspirations of students, Adopted Version of Boyi Subject Selection Questionnaire to measure students’ Attitude to Academic Subjects and Adapted version of Bakare Motivation for Occupation Preference Scale (MOPS) to measure students’ career aspirations. Data were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis with the use of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20.0. The result showed that there was significant relationship between parental expectations and career aspirations of respondents. Also there was significant relationship between attitude to academic subjects and career aspirations of respondents. However, it was found that attitude to academic subjects is more related to career aspirations of senior secondary school students than their parental expectation. Based on these findings, it was recommended that counsellors and teachers should assist the students in developing positive attitude to academic subjects in order to improve their awareness of career aspirations and to minimize the level of ignorance while choosing career.