Investigating The Impact of Physics Curriculum Design on Students’ Mental Health and Academic Performance Implication for Counselling

Abstract

The study investigated the impact of physics curriculum design on students’ mental health and academic performance: Implication for counselling. To achieve this, a quantitative research design was adopted for the study.  The population for the study comprised of 17,729 SS2 physics students in public senior secondary schools in the FCT, Abuja.  A Sample size of 380 SS2 students were selected for the study through Research Advisors Table (2006).   A 21-item instrument    tagged ‘Questionnaire on Impact of Physics Curriculum Design on   Mental Health and Students Academic   Performance’ (QPMA) was developed for the study. In addition, a 40-item Physics Achievement Test was developed for the study for the purpose of assessing students’ academic achievement in physics. To ensure validity of the instruments used, they were given to experts in educational research and Measurement and Evaluation.  Scores from the appraisal of experts were used to obtain consensus logical validity indices of 0.80 and 0.72 respectively. The instruments were later pilot tested on 30 students; the respondents were part of the population but not part of the sample for this study. The data obtained from the pilot test was used to compute the internal consistency of the instrument using Cronbach’s Alpha reliability method. and indices of 0.78 and 0.74 were obtained. Mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while regression statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings on the study showed there is a significant the impact of physics curriculum design on students’ mental health and academic performance. The study recommended that physics curriculum be restructured to help enhance students’ mental health and academic performance