Students’ and Teachers’ Participation in Decision-Making and Impact on School Work and School Internal Discipline in Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated students’ and teachers’ participation in decisionmaking in secondary schools and the consequent impact on their attitude to school work and school internal discipline in Nigeria. This was necessitated by the observed frequent breakdown of law and order in secondary schools alleged to be related to certain decisions taken without their inputs, usually forcing schools to be closed down for long periods thereby introducing serious wastages in the educational system. The responses of the randomly sampled 3,318 students and 612 teachers to the questionnaire used for data collection were analyzed to answer one research question and test six null hypotheses using frequency, simple percentage, mean, t-test, Chi-square and Pearson’s r. Results showed that students and teachers, irrespective of sex, indicated alike a low level of participation in administrative creative decisions which influenced their attitude to school work and school internal discipline. Furthermore, low level of participation was found to have significant unwholesome impact on their attitude to school work and the school internal discipline thus undermining accomplishment of set instructional objectives/educational goals. It was therefore recommended that all school administrators in Nigeria should wisely adopt participatory decision-making for optimal goal attainment.