ABSTRACT:

The study of general and specific behaviourial objectives on students’ achievement prior to instruction in social studies was carried out in order to determine its relative effectiveness in improving the performance of students in both internal and external examinations in Akwa Ibom State schools of Nigeria. Relevant literature was reviewed. A total of 270 junior secondary two students were used for the study. The instrument consisted of thirty multiple choice objective questions and a questionnaire. The research design adopted for the study was pretest-post test control group experimental design. Three Social Studies topics were taught within an eight week duration of the field work. One hypothesis was postulated for the study and tested at 0.05 level of significance using analysis of covariance (ANOVA). The results of the data analysis indicated that students presented with specific behavioural objectives prior to instruction in social studies had a significantly higher academic achievement than those presented with general objectives, who in turn had a significantly higher academic achievementthan those presented with no objective. Based on this finding some recommendations were made.