BEHAVIORAL CHALLENGES AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE: ANALYZING MALADAPTIVE INFLUENCES IN ABUJA SCHOOLS

The study investigated the influence of maladaptive behaviours and academic achievements of senior secondary school students in FCT-Abuja. The study was guided by one specific objective, one research question and two null hypotheses. The research designs for this study were descriptive survey and ex-post- facto design. The population of this study comprised of all Senior Secondary School students in year one (SSS1) in public secondary schools in FCT-Abuja. A sample size of two hundred and eighty-two (282) male and female SS1 students was sampled for the study. The instruments were a self-designed questionnaire titled “maladaptive behaviours questionnaire (MBQ)”, Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) result to collect data on academic achievement of the respondents and a checklist to identify students with maladaptive behaviours. The self-designed instrument was validated by two experts in measurement and evaluation in faculty of education, university of Abuja. In establishing the reliability of the instrument, the test re-test method was used under a pilot test. The tests yielded reliability index of 0.89 which was found to be high enough to make the instrument reliable. Frequency counts and percentages was used to analyse the demographic data while Mean scores and Standard Deviations were used to answer the research questions also t-test was used to test the hypotheses of the study. Findings revealed that there are maladaptive behaviours among Senior Secondary School Students in FCTAbuja such as truancy, disobedience to rules and regulations, students being exposed to aggression due to parents fighting, the academic achievement of senior secondary school students in FCT-Abuja was found to be slightly above average, a significant difference was found between maladaptive behaviours and academic achievement of Senior Secondary Students. The study recommended that parents should guide their children’s behaviours and as well address every form of maladaptive behaviours among them in order to make the issues of poor academic achievement among senior secondary school students in FCT-Abuja a thing of the past