Impact of classroom motivational climates on attitude to and achievement in visual arts among junior secondary school students in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the impact of classroom motivational climates on attitude to and achievement in Visual Arts among junior secondary school students in Lagos, Nigeria. A total of 120 junior secondary three students drawn from three junior secondary schools in Lagos Education District 6 served as participants. Each of the three schools was randomly assigned either the task-involved, ego-involved or the control condition. The experiments which entailed teaching lessons in Visual Arts within a specified motivational climate spanned over four weeks. Each lesson lasted for 80 minutes per week. Three research instruments were used for data collection. These comprised the Students’ Attitude to Visual Arts, Visual Arts Achievement Test, and Students’ Perception of Motivational Climate. Three null hypotheses were formulated in the study. The hypotheses were tested using the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The findings showed that the classroom motivational climates produced differential effects on the participants’ post-test scores on attitude to Visual Arts. The task-involved and ego-involved motivational climates were more effective than the control condition in bringing about greater positive feelings about Visual Arts class. The study also revealed that task-oriented and ego-involved motivational conditions recorded significant post-test mean gains in visual arts achievement.