The Effect of an Educational Program in Reducing Academic Procrastination Behavior Among Preparatory School Students in the City of Mosul

The current research aims at:1- Identifying the level of the academic procrastination for the secondary school students.2- Identifying the effect of an educational program on decreasing the academic procrastination for the secondary school students.To accomplish the objectives of the research, the following hypotheses were formulated:- There is no significant difference between the average marks of the experimental group in the pretest and the posttest.- There is no significant difference between the average marks of the experimental and the control groups in the posttest.- There is no significant difference between the average marks in the seven components of the academic procrastination behavior for the experimental groups in the pretest and the posttest.To fulfill the objectives of the research, a scale to measure the academic procrastination behavior was constructed, which consists of (38) items distributed on (7) components that stand for the reasons behind the academic procrastination. The apparent was verified and the percentage of the experts agreement was (85%). Also, the scale items discriminating power was determined and the validity of the construction by calculating the correlation coefficient between each of the scale items in addition to calculating the total score. From the other hand, invariability was measured using Alpha cronbach equation and the value of the invariability value was (0.82).The sample of the research consisted of (40) male student in the fifth secondary grade (biological, practical and literary branches) who were noticed to have academic procrastination behavior. The experimental design was used for the experimental and the control group with pretest and posttest. The individuals of the samples were distributed into two groups, namely the experimental group and the control group and each group included (20) students. Equivalence between the students of the two groups was conducted. The researcher constructed the educational program, which consists of (8) educational training sessions that represent the academic procrastination aspects and the program was applied to the experimental group. To analyze the data the SPSS statistical software was used and the results showed the following:1- There was a significant difference between the average marks of the experimental group individuals in the pretest and the posttest in favor of the posttest. This denotes that the program had an effect on decreasing the academic procrastination behavior of the secondary school students.2- There is a statistically significant difference between the marks of the two groups (the experimental and the control groups) in the pretest and the posttest in favor of the experimental group and this denotes decreasing the academic procrastination behavior for them.3- There is a statistically significant difference between the marks in the seven aspects of the academic procrastination behavior of the experimental group individuals in the pretest and the posttest and this indicates that the educational program (with its seven aspects) had a significant effect on decreasing the academic procrastination behavior of the experimental group individuals. Based on what has been mentioned, the researcher submitted a set of recommendations and suggestions