Abstract

The study examined the influence of students’ perceived academic competence of classmates on their peer acceptance and task engagement in Nsukka Education Zone. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The study used an ex-post facto design. The population for the study was 10616 senior secondary II students and a sample of I21 SSII students who participated in a sociometric interview conducted by 24 teachers randomly sampled from eight (8) public secondary schools in Nsukka Education zone of Enugu State, Nigeria. The instruments for data collection were well structured interview schedule and questionnaire with 3 clusters; PACQ, PAQ and TEQ. Cronbach Alpha Reliability yielded 0.79, 0.85 and 0.76 respectively. Mean & standard deviation were used for data analysis while t-test was used to test the hypotheses. The result of the study indicates that students with positively perceived academic competence are more accepted by peers and are fully engaged in tasks, while those with negatively perceived academic competence were less accepted by peers and are less engaged in tasks. This shows that students’ perceived academic competence of classmates has a significant influence on their peer acceptance and task engagements. It was recommended, among others, that teachers should develop individual differences that students perceive as acceptable through an inventory of the skills of each class member in order to give the needed self-confidence and prestige in the eyes of peers.