Relationship Between Teachers‟ Expectations and Junior High School Students‟ Learning Behaviour in the Aowin Municipality in Ghana”

Abstract

This study explores the relationship that exists between teachers‟ expectations and students learning behaviour in the Aowin Municipality. This study seeks to offer another way possible for improving students learning behaviour in the Aowin Municipality by considering the “relationship between teachers‟ expectations” and students learning behaviour in the Ghanaian context. A Correlational research design was employed for the study. “Using the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) table of sample size, a sample of 225 comprising 205 students and 20 teachers from 19 Junior High Schools in the Aowin Municipality was used.” A multi stage sampling method is adopted and used for conducting the study. An adapted Teacher Expectations questionnaire by Gallahar (2009), “with reliability coefficient” of 0.87 was used for the study. The data was quantitatively analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The findings revealed that teachers have high expectations; and that some expectations are dominantly expressed by the teachers. Teachers‟ expectations were seen to have reflected in the students‟ learning behaviours. The findings on the relationship between teacher expectation and students‟ learning behaviour, though not significant, it was concluded that what teachers expect of their students may have some form of influence on the learning behaviours of students. It is therefore recommended that the school authorities should regulate the kind of expectations teachers give their students. For instance the head teacher can have the general expectations for the school as well as specific classroom expectations by the individual class teachers. This can be read or pasted to keep reminding the students of what is expected of them.