THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTING STYLE ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL EDUCATION NEEDS

ABSTRACT

The main objective of the study was to investigate the influence of parenting styles on academic perforce of children with special educational need. Specifically the work seek to examine the impact of Authoritarian , Authoritative and uninvolved Parenting style and its effect on the academic performance of children with special educational need. This study was guided by the following theories Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory and the social disability theory of Michael Oliver (1998) the sample of this study consists of a total of 30 forms one, two and three students with disabilities of Government High School Buea Town, Presbyterian Compressive High School Buea, and GHS Buea. The sampling technique used was the purposive sampling. A four-point Likert scale with response option, strongly agrees (SA), Agree (A), strongly disagree (SD), disagree (D) questionnaire was the instrument use for data collection Data gathered from the respondents were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage counts) while the spearman roh‟ correlation coefficient was used to test the research hypotheses formulated in the study. The finding show that The negative sign of the correlation coefficient(R=-0.217*), a positive relationship authoritarian parenting style and academic performance (R=0.227*)a positive relationship between uninvolved parenting style and academic performance (R=0.265*).Generally the result there is a significant relationship between parenting style and performance. From the test result, two out of the three hypothesis were significant at a 0.05 significant level that is, (P=0.048< 0.05) and (P=0.003< 0.05) It was therefore, recommended that parents should encourage the education of persons with special education needs by providing their needs, spent enough time them, assist them in assignment, used motivational strategies and affected quality to boost their psychology about disabilities, the study also recommends the government to come up with television shows and radio program on parental styles and children with special educational needs which is going to addressed matters concerning this set of children.