Effect of Home Environment on Academic Performance of Social Studies Students

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

From a developmental perspective, the many changes that occurs in children from conception to birth and from birth to adulthood, it is of great importance to understand the processes of child development and the undoubting influences of the environment on the child. In other words, how malleable are children? How much influence can the environment have in the cognitive and socio-emotional development of the child and how irreversible are positive and negative environmental influences?

Environment literally means surrounding and everything that affect an organism during its lifetime. In another words Environment is sum total of water, air and land interrelationships among themselves and also with the human being, other living organisms and property”. It includes all the physical and biological surrounding and their interactions.

The most widely accepted theory and evidence in the field of child development is called the “transactional theory of child development” (Parker and Greer 1988; Sameroff and Chandler 1975). This model takes into account built-in characteristics of the child as well as environmental influences, and then predicts lawful change and continuity during childhood and adolescence (Chase-Lansdale and Wakschlag 1995).

The family environment also contributes to intellectual competence. Cognitive development involves a host of domains including verbal ability, problem-solving skills, mathematical reasoning, use of logic, and social intelligence (Weinberg 1989). As with other genetic endowments, a range of intellectual abilities is born in the population of children. The genetic makeup (genotype or coding of genes) toward a child’s high or low intellectual competence is significant, but there is considerable variability in how this genetic proclivity influences development; some have argued that variation of approximately 20-25 points of phenotypic intelligence (i.e.,...