Pedagogical Approaches in the Social Studies Instructional Process in Western Region Colleges of Education, Ghana

Abstract

The study focused on the pedagogical approaches of the current Social Studies curriculum of the Colleges of Education in the western Region of Ghana. Descriptive survey was used for the study and a multi-stage sampling technique was used to sample 480 teacher trainees for the study. Self-developed questionnaires were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data including frequencies and percentages. The results revealed that most of the tutors did not use appropriate pedagogical approaches to affect the teaching and learning of Social Studies. Furthermore, the Social Studies teachers did not exhibit enough pedagogical content knowledge of teaching learning strategies which significantly enhances the Social Studies instructional process in classroom. It is recommended that Social Studies tutors should try as much as possible to integrate the use of different teaching and learning methods in teaching to improve the quality of instruction given in schools.