Impact of Students’ Self-determination and Motivation on Academic Staff Instructional Flexibility in Federal Universities in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Instructional flexibility of academic staff is a vital requirement in today’s dynamic educational
landscape. If today’s educational goals must be achieved for Higher Education to take its rightful
place as the bedrock of societal development. And to achieve academic staff’s instructional
flexibility, students must be encouraged to participate in the teaching and learning process actively.
This study explored the perceived impact of students’ self-determination and motivation on
academic staff instructional flexibility in Federal Universities in South-West, Nigeria. This study
was anchored on the Self-determination theory of motivation. The study employed descriptive and
correlational research designs. The population of the study included all the 6520 academic staff in
six Federal Universities in the South-Western, Nigeria, that have been in existence for over 10
years before COVID-19. Raosoft's sample size online calculator was used to get the 400 sample
size. The participants were selected from three federal universities for the study using a multi-stage
sampling technique. “Academic Staff Instructional Flexibility Scale (ASIFS)” and “Selfdetermination and Motivation Assessment Scale (S-DMAS)” were the instruments used for data
collection. The descriptive statistics were used to analyse the collected demographic data. The only
research question was answered using mean and standard deviation. The two hypotheses were
tested at .05 level of significance, using multiple linear regression and one-way analysis of
variance (ANOVA) statistical tools. The findings showed that students’ self-determination and
rank of academic staff significantly impact the instructional flexibility of academic staff, while
motivation did not significantly predict academic staff’s instructional flexibility. Based on the
findings, it was recommended that for effective engagement of students’ self-determination and
motivation, the academic staff’s strength should be increased. In addition, more training should be
given to academic staff on leveraging students’ self-determination and lecturers’ instructional
flexibility. Lastly, professional support and opportunities should be made available for all
academic staff, irrespective of rank.