Research on Citizenship Values of Students from the Southwest Colleges of Education in Nigeria

AUTHORS: Ijiwole, A.A, Adeyemi, M.A

ABSTRACT:Cultivating students' practical skills, ideal values and attitudes is one of the main goals of education. The development of such values and attitudes is aimed at making students good citizens of Nigeria. College of Education students are expected to imbibe these values and attitudes and ensure that their students also imbibe these values through their professional practices. However, studies have revealed that in spite of all the efforts made by the government to inculcate positive values and attitudes in students, citizenship values are not demonstrated by many Nigerian youths. This study, therefore, investigated the perceived citizenship values of College of Education (COE) students in South West, Nigeria. The research was a descriptive cross-sectional survey type. The sample comprised 1,448 students drawn from nine colleges of education in the three states in South West, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the respondents. A researcher-designed questionnaire, “Citizenship Values Scale (CVS)” was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics of Percentage and Mean were used to answer research questions one and two, t-test was used for the hypothesis. The results showed that the College of Education students’ perception towards all the citizenship mean values were positive. Furthermore, patriotism, justice/Fair play, openness/transparency, obedience to law, kindness, contentment, respect for others, responsibility, discipline and honesty were the major citizenship values, while patriotism was the most preferred citizenship value among the students; in addition, the result revealed that male and female students were not significantly different in their perception of citizenship values. Thus, it was recommended that College of Education students should be encouraged to develop and display all the citizenship values especially in the area of honesty through example and practice of what had been learned and imbibed.