Perception of colleges of education students attitude towards the teaching and learning of social studies in some selected colleges of education in Ashanti Region

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the perception of Colleges of Education students’ attitudes towards the teaching and learning of Social Studies in the Ashanti region. The pragmatist paradigm, concurrent nested mixed method and descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. The simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 292 respondents for the study. Quantitative data from the study was analyzed using descriptive statistics from SPSS version 26.0 software in which mean, standard deviation, percentages, frequencies and tables were used while qualitative data obtained were analyzed under emergent themes. Findings revealed that majority of 92.4 percent of students have positive perceptions towards the teaching and learning of Social Studies. The study also revealed that 90.1 percent of students have positive attitudes toward student-centred techniques of teaching but 9.9 percent of them have negative attitudes toward teacher centred techniques of teaching. Research further revealed that factors like inadequate teaching and learning resources, inadequate textbooks negatively affect teaching and learning while tutors use of variety of teaching techniques improve learning. Moreover, it was revealed that Colleges of Education students rank Social Studies first above other subjects. Based on the findings, it was recommended that T-TEL and Universities, to which Colleges of Education are affiliated, should continue to provide seminars to tutors in areas of material resource development and research. Collaboration should be deepened among the Ministry of Education, T-TEL and other non-governmental educational organizations to provide the needed teaching and learning materials for the teaching and learning of Social Studies at the Colleges of Education in Ghana.