ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this study was to investigate family background variables such as; family size, parents’ educational status and occupation as a predictor of  achievement motivation and self efficacy belief of primary school pupils in Enugu Education zone of Enugu State Nigeria. Six research questions and six null hypotheses guided the study. The study used correlation research design. The population of the study comprised 6905 primary five pupils. Multi stage sampling techniques was used to select 287 respondents. Two self-developed instruments titled Achievement Motivation scale (AMS) and Pupils Self-Efficacy Belief Scale (PSBS) were used for data collection. To ensure the validity of the instrument, the instrument was face validated by three experts, two from the Department of educational foundations and one from Science Education Department. The data generated from the trial testing were analyzed using Cronbach Alpha statistics and the overall reliability index of 0.77 and 0.86 were obtained. Pearson moment correlation was used to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses were analysed using regression at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that number of children is the family, parents’ educational status and parents’ occupation is not a predictor of achievement motivation of primary school pupils in Enugu education Zone. The findings further showed that parents occupation is a predictor of primary pupils self efficacy belief. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made which include꞉ that the need for policy aimed at creating general awareness among stakeholders in educational enterprise about the importance roof training teachers, parents and students for achievement motivation and self –efficacy belief of the pupils since such training may facilitate students’ achievement motivation and self –efficacy belief.