Public Junior High School Pupils’ perceptions of their learning style preferences and their relationship with academic performance in Social Studies in East Mamprusi Municipality

Abstract

The study investigated learning style preferences of public junior high school pupils in studying Social Studies in the East Mamprusi Municipality of Ghana and their relationship with academic performance in Social Studies. The Grasha and Riechmann‘s (1982) learning styles model guided the study. Cross-sectional descriptive survey design within the positivists‘ quantitative methodology was used to collect data using a structured questionnaire. Data from 230 out of 234 participants selected through proportionate stratified random sampling technique were used for the study. With the aid of SPSS, descriptive (mean, standard deviation) and inferential statistics (independent samples t-test, Pearson product moment correlation, and multiple linear regression) 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 school-related, home-related, and personal factors collectively and individually significantly predicted the learning style preferences of the pupils in Social Studies. Furthermore, the learning styles jointly and individually related positively with the academic performance 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.