Social Competence as Predicator of Secondary School Student's Academic Achievement in Chemistry in Enugu State

The study examined social competence as a predictor of secondary school students' academic achievement in chemistry at Enugu State. Two research topics and two hypotheses guided the investigation. The study's population consisted of 4934 SS2 Chemistry students. 347 SS2 Chemistry students 186 males and 161 females made up the study's sample size. A multistage sampling approach utilizing various techniques was used to draw the sample. Two tools were employed to gather the data. They are Social Competence Scale (SCS) and Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT). SCS contained 10 item questions while CAT contained 40 objective questions. The two instruments were validated by three experts. The reliability of (SCS) was 0.77 using Cronbach alpha while the reliability of (CAT) was 0.77 using Kuder-Richardson 20 formula. This indicated that the two instruments were reliable. The research question were answered using r and R2 while the hypotheses were tested using P value. The findings revealed that there is moderate predictive power of social competence on secondary school student’s academic achievement in Chemistry and the prediction was statically significant (r = 0.510: R2 = 0.260: P-value = 0.000). More so, the result revealed a high and moderate positive predictive strength of social competence scores on male and female students’ achievement scores in chemistry and the prediction was statically significant (Male: r = 0.850: R2 = 0.723: P-value = 0.000) (Female: r = 0.761: R2 = 0.579: P-value = 0.000). In order to increase students' accomplishment in chemistry, the findings suggested, among other things, that chemistry teachers modify their instructional behavior to ensure accurate identification of the students' social competency in instructional practice. Conclusions were drawn from the suggestions.