POLITICAL LITERACY AS CORRELATE OF CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS LEVEL OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NSUKKA EDUCATION ZONE, ENUGU STATE.
ABSTRACT
The study investigates political literacy as correlate of civic consciousness level of secondary school students in Nsukka Educatiuon Zone. Correlational research design was adopted for the study, nine research questions and five null hypotheses guided the study. 450 senior secondary school students were selected from the population of 4,519 in 58 secondary schools in Nsukka education zone, Enugu state. Data was collected using 40 items of political literacy test (PLT) and 15 items structured questionnaire of civic consciousness level (CCL). Political literacy test was drawn from SS2 civic education curriculum and it was based on five political literacy concept using teacher made table of specification. 50 items were generated and the test was subjected to three stage validations to ensure face and content validity to three experts in faculty of education and it yielded reliability coefficient values of 0.71 and 0.91 respectively. The reliability coefficient was determined using Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient technique. Analysis was done using mean and standard deviation for answering the research question 1, 4 to 9 while 2 and 3 was analysed using Pearson product correlation. Liner regression and Anova was used for testing the null hypotheses. Findings revealed that urban students have higher political literacy than rural students, among others; it revealed that there is a moderate, positive and significant relationship between the political literacy of students and the level of their civic consciousness. It was recommended government should provide rural areas with social infrastructure to enable rural students have access to national news and television politically enlightening shows and programmes without much cost.