Students’ Attitudes and Their Academic Performance in Nationhood Education

Abstract

The main goal of the nationhood education is to instill the sense of loyalty and passion into the nation. In a Malaysian context, several academic subjects at higher education such as Malaysian Studies, Ethnic Relations and National Language have been implemented in order to achieve the goal. Malaysian Study is one of the compulsory courses offered by all private universities in Malaysia that is intended to educate students with national values, patriotism and belongingness to the country. However, past empirical evidence show that many students have a lack of interest to learn such subject. Therefore, the current study investigated contributing factors to students’ academic achievement and also examined students’ attitudes towards that subject. Using quantitative approach, the current study categorized four main factors namely the suitability and interest in syllabus, being active in class, early preparation and revision, types of enjoyable activities, interest in teaching aids and good class attendance. Using questionnaires and SPSS software as the main tools in this study, the mean score, frequency and percentage were obtained. It is concluded statistically from this study that students’ perception of their lecturers play a significant role in determining their learning outcomes in Malaysian Studies, while the lecturers are of the opinion that learning environment is a factor which contributes significantly to the students’ achievement in this subject. The current study suggests that the teachers build upon excellent rapport with students and create an attractive and enjoyable environment to get the students to dynamically involve in the classroom activities and learn the Malaysian Studies enthusiastically and efficiently

The Influence of AQ on the Academic Achievement among Malaysian Polytechnic Students

“…It can be concluded that AQ is absolutely not much of an influence to the academic achievement of students. It has another factor that affected academic achievement such as attitudes towards an academic subject.Another factor was supported by a study from Mohd Mahzan et al, (2013) indicated that most students were not active in class activities, poor attendance and exhibited a lack of motivation to study the subject. Another interesting matter to be clarified in the context of this study is that AQ may tend not to be linked with cognitive elements such as academic achievement and IQ.…”

The attitude to learning chemistry instrument (ALChI): linking sex, achievement, and attitudes

“…Our results also matched those obtained by Dierks et al (2016), who reported that 12-to-19-year-old German students with high academic performance showed higher interest towards science than students with low academic performance, specifically towards activities that link science with intellectual tasks or practical tasks related to the environment. Several authors have argued that students with positive attitude towards science use more learning strategies than those with negative attitudes (Farooq et al, 2011;Awang et al, 2013). This implies that students with a favourable or positive attitude towards class contents or science courses are more likely to obtain better results because they are more likely to persist and are more willing to read and learn about subjects that interest them than those students with less favourable attitudes.…”

Attitude and performance: A universal co-relation, example from a chemistry classroom*

“…From table 5 it is clear that most of the students underwent superficial or surface learning. It will not be improper to say that, there was negative attitude towards learning environment which had caused surface learning as evidenced from poor performance of students (Awang et. al.…”