CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
This project is centered around the employment of developmental psychology in the secondary school education, in Oredo local government area and the extent to which its impact has influenced the student of the schools in that local government area. One of the most pressing issues in the minds of people in Nigeria in regard to education today is the standard or quality being achieved from the system. Qualitative education should lead to verifiable improvements through knowledge and skills. In modern times of technological advancement all over the world, it is possible to acquire knowledge in fields of human endeavors and good communication skills. The education sector is geared towards achieving the national goals of economic and social development. One way of achieving this is through the education of the student in secondary schools. Nigeria is a developing country with different kinds of problems. Student’s performance in their academics is as a result of their mental development how they develop mentally determines their outcome physically. Their mental development can either have a negative or positive influence on their academic performance. Nigeria school today, particularly in secondary school, student perform poorly due to the environment and their mindset.
The primary function of secondary school is to prepare the student for the feature, how to adapt the influence, the environment in a positive way and also to prepare them for tertiary institution. The stages of development of  human being after birth begins at infancy from where a baby goes through the other stages of a toddler, early childhood, late childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age, and old age. At these different stages of development there is a need to apply a specific methodology in other to achieve the best result in educating individuals based on the particular stage which they may fall in at a given time of their total development. Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally developmental psychology was concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence and adult age development, ageing, and the entire life span.
This field examines change across a board range of topics including motor skills and other psycho-physiological processes such as cognitive development involving areas like problem solving moral understanding and conceptual understanding language acquisition, another psycho-physiological process covered in the field developmental psychology, comprises of social, personality and emotional development. Other psycho-physiological process treated in this project is self-concept and identify formation. The fallen standard of education in Nigeria makes imperative a research into the methods and techniques with which student are educated in secondary school, the extent to which they are applied and the effects they ultimately have on these students. Developmental psychology explores issues such as the extent to which development occurs through the gradual accumulation of knowledge versus stage like development, or the extent to which children are born with inmate mental structure as opposed to generally baring through experience. This research work aims at assessing the study of developmental psychology and asserting its influence on secondary school student, and suggesting more effective ways in which the study of developmental psychology can aid in improving student performance in their academics.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
With the last three decades, it is observed that the performance of student in Oredo Local Government Area, has drastically dropped at an alarming rate, particularly in secondary schools. this is very much reflected in the annual results of the senior secondary school certificate examination (SSCE). At both the junior and senior secondary schools respectively. This has led the government agencies and ministry responsible for education in Oredo Local Government, to demand solutions and reforms from both private and public secondary schools within the Local Government Area. There are more complains that various policies have been put forward, more funding has been called for, yet the decline of the quality of education in Oredo Local Government has steadily continued. Export argue that the areas of guidance and counseling, personality, social and emotional assessment of students have been gravely underestimated and neglected in lieu of more lectures and reading hours. It is assumed that this has contributed the most to the lapse in student’s performance, by having overlooked their behavioural tendency and general psyche towards learning.
In view of these several question have raised towards finding a lasting solution to the problem of declining academic performance in Oredo Local Government, these include: