Abstract: The study investigated influence of Learning Styles on Academic Achievement of Students in secondary schools in Onna Local Government Area. The population for the study was 1200. A sample size of 200 Economics students in senior secondary two (SS2) was selected for the study through a simple random sampling technique. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The instrument for data collection was Economics Achievement test (EAT). An independent t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. This technique was adequate in examining the performance of two groups of students.
The result of the study showed that learning style positively influence academic performance. It was therefore recommended among others that teachers should work in collaboration with the parents in motivating the students to develop good and positive learning style in their studies. It was therefore concluded that students who devote and identify their learning style perform better than those who do not.
Influence of Learning Styles on Academic Achievement of Students
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Learning is a wonderful idea by which an individual must engage his or herself to achieve a common goal. Most importantly, earlier research found that learning styles adopted by students are related to their academic performance. It is known that learning processes vary from person to person due to biological and psychological differences. Learning styles has been conceptualized by different authors and scholars. A learning style is defined as the characteristics, strength and preferences in the way how people receive and process information. It refers to the fact that every person has his or her own method or set of strategies when learning.
According to Johnson and Johnson (2014) learning style is the preferred way in which an individual approaches a task or learning situation. The learning style or approach includes Note taking, planned study or time allocation, and cooperative learning style, it has also been characterized and explained in several ways like auditory learning and visual learning styles and kinesthetic learning styles which is based on a variety of theoretical models.
Pack (2011) opine that more than three fifth of a person’s learning styles is biologically imposed, and that each person is born with certain tendencies toward particular learning style, but these biological or inherited characteristics are influence by culture, personal experiences, maturity level and development. It is commonly believed that learning styles are not really concerned with what learners learn, but rather how they prefer to learn and it is also an important factor for student academic performance and attitudes, students have different strengths and preferences in the ways they take in and process information which is to say, they have different learning styles.
However, recent research suggest that the styles by which one learn and applies knowledge is an important characteristic to consider in the aggregate educational process Kolb (2010) acknowledgement of unique learning styles is an attempt to characterized the complex processes by which one acquires knowledge.
Learning styles may be thought of as a formulation of preconceptions by an individual engaged in the activity of learning. Teaching and learning in developing countries like Nigeria still have a lot of areas to explore to improve achievement of the students in lessons and the output of teachers in service delivery. Learning style of the student is one of such areas to know the best and fastest way of making the learners to learn.
Influence of Learning Styles on Academic Achievement of Students
1.2 Statement of the Problem
There have been public concern on the declining state of student’s academic performance in both school and public examinations over the years, especially at the secondary school level. The academic performance of students in school is keeping tasking the already inadequate human and material resources in our educational system. This menace has added weight and continues to militate against the realization of the objectives of the teaching – learning process. This ugly development is becoming increasingly worrisome.
Worrisome by the incidence of poor academic performance among students in schools, parent have pointed accusing fingers on teachers in respect to their teaching effectiveness regarding methods and techniques while teachers in turn put the blame on the inability of the government to provide basic educational materials to schools. Several research reports indicate that student’s achieve poorly in secondary school social science subjects especially Economics. A number of factors were identified as imitating against students attainment of the objectives of science instruction. The isolated factors among research are the inappropriate and uninspiring teaching approaches adopted by Economics teachers shy away from activity oriented teaching approaches which are known to be more effective. They rely mostly on teaching approaches that are easy but most times inadequate and inappropriate.
However, of all strategies have been employed in teaching Economics for over two decades. Not much effort seems to have been made towards finding out the effectiveness of the instructional methods used by Economics teachers and the learning approaches adopted by the students. A lot of innovative instructional methods including learning styles have been suggested for teaching but records shows that there is a trend of poor academic performances in secondary school students in Economics. This has been a subject of concern to the researcher, thereby necessitated this study ” Influence of Learning Styles on Academic Achievement of Students in secondary schools in Onna Local Government Area.
