EFFECTS OF PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE ON SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS ECONOMICS IN PANKSHIN, PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA
Keywords:
Portfolio Assessment, Students’ Attitude, Economics Education,Abstract
The study investigated the effect of portfolio assessment technique on students’ attitude towards Economics in Pankshin, Plateau State, Nigeria. The population of the study consisted of all the 544 Senior Secondary Two (SSII) students offering Economics in the 16 public and private secondary schools in Pankshin, Plateau State. The used of public and private schools in Pankshin determine if the students’ will differ in their attitude to and achievement in Economics. The sample of the study consisted of 160 students in four senior secondary schools made up of two public and two private schools out of the 16 senior secondary schools in Pankshin. The study adopted the multi-stage sampling, where more than one sampling technique was employed for the study. The instrument used for data collection in the study was title Students' Attitude to Economic Questionnaire (SAEQ). The descriptive statistics of frequency distribution tables, simple, graphs, means and standard deviation were used for answering the research questions, while the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used for testing the hypotheses formulated for the study at 0.05 level of significance. The choice of ANCOVA test statistic was used to help control for the effects of pre-test on the posttest scores collected from the same groups. Findings showed that students exposed to portfolio assessment demonstrated a significant improvement in attitude toward Economics compared to those in the control group, whose attitudes remained largely unchanged. The study further revealed no significant difference in the effectiveness of the technique based on gender or school type, indicating that portfolio assessment benefits all categories of learners. The results suggest that portfolio assessment promotes increased engagement, reflective learning and ownership of academic progress, thereby fostering more positive perceptions of Economics. The study concludes that portfolio assessment is an effective strategy for enhancing students’ attitude toward Economics and recommends its integration into secondary school instructional and evaluation practices.
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