Public Junior High School Pupils’ Perceptions of their Learning Style Preferences and their Relationship with Academic Achievement in Social Studies in East Mamprusi Municipality, Ghana

Abstract

The study investigated learning style preferences of public junior high school pupils in studying Social Studies in the East Mamprusi Municipality in the North East Region of Ghana and their relationship with academic achievement in the subject. The Grasha and Riechmann’s (1982) learning styles model guided the study. The cross-sectional descriptive survey design within the positivists’ quantitative methodology was used to collect quantitative data using structured questionnaires. Data was collected from 230 participants selected through proportionate stratified random sampling technique for the study. With the aid of SPSS, descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Pearson product moment correlation) were used to analyse the data. Even though the study established that the pupils practiced a mixture of the learning styles in different intensities, the independent learning style was dominant among the pupils whereas the competitive learning style was least prevalent. The findings also pointed out that, learning styles jointly and individually related positively with the academic achievement of the pupils in studying Social Studies. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that the East Mamprusi Municipal Education Directorate should liaise with the management of the public basic schools to organise orientation programmes for the pupils on the effective practice of learning styles towards the study of Social Studies in the schools.