Reasons Why Student Lose Interest In A Particular Subject In College
It is evident that the role of interest as it boosts motivation and guarantees an individual’s engagement in content-specific activities. It is a powerful driving factor that triggers and promotes learning and is considered essential for academic success. Interest is characterized by increased attention, effort, and affect, experienced in any particular moment, as well as an enduring predisposition to reengage with a particular object or topic over time. Interest appears to be especially important in attracting and sustaining students’ attention. Its presence ensures active and meaningful engagement in science classes, which is key to academic success and better learning outcomes.
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Students’ interest can be classified in two types: situational and individual. While individual interest concerns personal interests one holds over time, situational interest is generated by a source external to the individual, such as an experiment or a demonstration that a teacher may conduct in the classroom. “Furthermore, interest is content specific and has a learning function. Situational interest has a relation to content such that it might be unexpected, novel, complex, or mysterious, which makes salient a gap in one’s knowledge a gap that motivates people to engage with the content. Another influential factor that stimulates students’ interest is the connection between what they learn and real-life contexts, as this addresses topics that are relevant and applicable to their lives.
REASONS WHY STUDENT LOSE INTEREST IN A PARTICULAR SUBJECT
- Teaching method: Teaching method is the way of teachers delivers the subjects to students by using certain methods corresponding to the characteristics of students that were encountered. Each student has different characteristics from the very clever, moderate, and there is also less able to receive lessons quickly. Therefore, a teacher must be able to apply the learning method in accordance with the characteristics of students in order to improve their interest in learning the subject. Unless the students whose middle — low ability will be left behind in the understanding of the material that is presented. And it will cause the students mentioned are not interested and lazy to learn because they have felt unable to do. Teaching method helps to determine the success or failure of learning and teaching activity and it is a unity in teaching system. The more precise method that is used by teachers in teaching is expected to be more effective the achievement of learning goal
- School location: School location refers to where a given school is situated. It could be in an urban or rural area. A lot of researches had been carried out in respect to school locations and some hold the view that location influences the academic achievement of students in such a school. Undoubtedly, it could be argued that since some of the test developers are teachers usually drawn from well established urban schools in addition to those in the employ of the relevant ministries and examining bodies, it is obvious that the items making up the tests are bound to be drawn to reflect the interest of the norm group to the detriment of those in the rural areas. School location usually influences truancy among students which in turn affect students’ interest in learning.
- Peer group influence:
A peer group consists of people or individuals that are within ages that are close in years, for instance between range of one to four years, the school serves as primary setting for the membership of peer group, they may be in the same class, the same sex and close interaction is of equals. It is generally observed that peer group has a lot of influence on students. This is seen from the role played by the peer group in the life and learning of a child, it is believed that students feel more comfortable and relaxed among fellow students. A child who is brilliant and surrounded by dull friends would lose interest in learning. On the other hand, a peer group which inclined to study would have positive effect on a dull member towards learning and stimulate his/her interest on learning. This is the form, way and why close friends of the same sex (peers) communicate among themselves whether in public or exclusively. Another major factor that influences students’ interest in a particular subject is peer group influence. When two or more friends like a particular teacher, they tend to like the subject taught by the teacher. But one among the friends hate a particular subject the rest tend to hate the subject as well.
- Teachers’ experience: Most students lose interest in learning a particular subject when the teacher is not experienced or does not really have adequate knowledge of the study subject he/she is teaching. The common refrain that teaching experience does not matter after the first few years in the classroom appears no longer supported by the preponderance of the research, particularly when teachers’ effectiveness is examined across the continuum of their individual careers, rather than by comparing different cohorts of teachers with each other. Of course, not all experience is educative: some highly experienced teachers are not particularly effective or have retired on the job, and some novice teachers are dynamic and effective. However, by and large, a more experienced teaching workforce offers numerous benefits to students and schools. A growing research base suggests that teachers’ effectiveness rises sharply in the first few years of their careers, and this upward trajectory continues well into the second and often third decade of teaching, with a steeper slope when teachers work in collegial settings. The effects of teaching experience on student learning interest in a particular subject are significant.
- Class size: Class size can be defined as the number of students in a class at a given specific time undergoing teaching and learning instructions of a teacher. class size can be seen as the number of students per teacher in a given class. In Nigeria, small class size is very common in private schools while large class size is a peculiar feature in public schools because the government does not usually invest in public school developments. The general consequences based on experience is that teaching and learning in large class sizes is not usually interesting (compared to small class sizes) with teachers unable to teach, explain and evaluate concept effectively to the best of students’ understanding, hence the students’ learning interest is affected. However, class size affects the level of understanding of the students since the teacher will not have full attention on every student in the classroom. Both large and small class size affects students’ learning interest. The effect of class size on students’ learning interest has indicated inconsistent findings. Class size has insignificant influence or relationship with students’ learning interest. The smaller class size can have a consistently positive effect on students’ learning interest, but that the result does not mean that the positive benefits of smaller class size were not present.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion student lost interest in learning a particular subject because of various reasons as highlighted above. Every student wants to have a conducive learning environment to study. If most schools especially tertiary institution could hire the services of professionals with wealth of experience and good understanding of the subjects they are assigned to teach; it will go a long way to influence students’ interest in a particular subject.
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