Abstract

This study aimed at exploring psychosocial factors that affect learners’ academic performance within the theoretical framework of Bronfenbrenner’s Bio-ecological theory. This was against the background that despite many efforts, trends of academic performance in national examinations pass rates showed that Malawi is behind from meeting the NESP target of 95% learning outcomes by 2017. The study used single case study, selecting one co-education day secondary school in Lilongwe Rural Education District in Central West Education Division, sampled learners, teachers and headteacher. Data was collected through a questionnaire, focus group discussions and document analysis. SPSS and QASI were used to analyse the data. Findings indicated that learners are influenced by different psychosocial factors such as personal, family and background, peers, school and community issues. Statistics show that there were variations in agreement as to which factors affect the learners (personal; discipline 50.7 % & mood 48.6 %, self-motivation, & self-financing 53 %), family and background 38.3 %, school 33.4 % & peers 31.9 % meaning that no single factor universally affect all learners, but at least some factors affect some learners. In addition, psychosocial factors have a bearing on the learners’ presence and concentration in school, class, lessons and study. Therefore, the study argues that psychosocial factors are underlying elements in learners’ academic performance as such educational stakeholders should strive to understand them in order to facilitate inclusive interventions in the education processes to accelerate learners’ academic performance towards 100% pass rates (average for the past 5 years is at 50.3 %). In academia, knowledge gained supplements to the body of knowledge on.

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School	: School of Education
Issued Date	: 2019

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