Perceived Influence of Cultural Beliefs on Students' Academic Performance in Science in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria

This research examined the influence of perceived students’ cultural beliefs on their science performance in secondary schools in Makurdi Local Government Area (LGA) of Benue State, Nigeria using descriptive survey design. The sample comprises a total of 116 students in intact classes (66 males and 50 females) representing 13% of the population of 900 secondary two students in 21 grant-aided schools in the LGA. Four co-educational schools were purposively sampled in order to make use of both male and female students. Three research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. Perception of Student’s Cultural Belief Questionnaire (PSCBQ) was researcher-developed and used for data collection. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.62 established through Cronbach Alpha method. The data was analyzed using mean scores for the research questions and t-test for the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings were that students agreed that the stated cultural practices are perceived by them, yielding a high mean (3.38) and that perceived cultural belief influence students’ performance in science to a high extent (3.19). The mean of the influence of perceived cultural beliefs between male and female students’ performance in science was 3.20 for males and 3.23 for females. This provided the mean difference of 0.03 which was found to be non-significant. It was concluded that students that perceived cultural beliefs influence their performance in science. It was recommended that more awareness should be created to the students by science teachers so as to reduce the negative effect of cultural beliefs on their performance in science.