Effect of Study Skills Counselling on Self-Efficacy and Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Ibadan-North, Oyo State, Nigeria

This study investigated the effect of study skills counselling on self-efficacy and academicachievement of some selected public secondary school students in Ibadan-North. The pretestposttest, control group experimental design was used. Multistage, stratified simple randomsampling technique was used to select 150 participants from two public senior secondaryschools among other public secondary schools within Ibadan North Local Government Area ofOyo state. Seventy five (75) Participants were assigned to a treatment group of study skillcounselling (SSC) and likewise seventy five (75) in the control group. Participants in theexperimental group were exposed to eight weeks of study skill counselling, while the controlgroup received non therapeutic attention. Three instruments titled Study Habit Inventory(SHI) (á=0.83). Self-Efficacy Scale (á=0.82). Academic Achievement Test on EnglishLanguage (AATEL) consisting 50 multiple choice questions extracted from senior secondaryschool certificate past questions with(á=0.79) were used. Two hypotheses were tested at0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).Treatment had a main significant effect (F1, 147 = 2.355, p < 0.05, ç2 = 0.016) on improvingacademic achievement of senior secondary students exposed to SSC. There was also significantmain effect of treatment (F1, 147 = 6.802, p < 0.05, ç2 = 0.044) in enhancing self-efficacy ofthe students in the experimental group over the control group. The findings show that StudySkills Counselling (SSC) strategy significantly affects students’ academic performance. Also,school psychologists training in human learning and memory assessment of individualdifferences should greatly facilitate their work in improving students study skills in the followingareas: assessment based consultation, students’ academic behaviour management, planimplementation, examination anxiety reduction strategies counselling and the provision of in-service training for teachers and parents. Study skill counselling therefore should beincluded in curriculum planning across all educational levels so that study skills counsellingand training are implemented as an academic programme for improvement on learnersstudy habits for excellent academic performance.