INTRODUCTION
This piece entails the introduction to how to improve attitude in education, especially social studies. The article is a research work carried out by a graduate. This is the chapter one of the study. Continue reading.
This chapter comprises the background to the study, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, objective of the study, research questions, and significance of the study, limitations, delimitations and organization of the study.
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Social Studies according to United States education system, it is the integrated study of multiple (fields of social sciences and humanities, including history, geography, and political science).
The term was first coined by American educators around the turn of the 20th century. Social Studies are important to the nation as a whole because, it breeds discipline, informs to responsibly participate in a diverse democratic society (American research educational journal, 2007).
The overall goal of the Ministry of Education is to provide relevant and quality education for all Ghanaians, including the disadvantaged, to enable them acquire skills which will make them functionally literate and productive. This helps to facilitate poverty alleviation and promote the rapid socio-economic growth of the country (Ministry of Education, 2012).
Preparing students for the 21st century cannot be accomplished without a strong and sustaining emphasis on Social Studies (Ministry of Education 2012).
Social Studies provide the skills that are the key to opening doors for a more diverse, competitive workforce and responsible citizenry. Learners use critical thinking, self-assessment, reasoning, problem-solving, collaboration, research, and investigation to make connections in new and innovative ways as they progress through Social Studies education.
These standards outline the knowledge and skills needed to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world (Shulman, 1986).
The National Council for Social Studies divides Social Studies objectives into four categories: knowledge, skills, values, and participation (Barr, 1977).
These four categories of the learning of
Social Studies are also addressed in the objectives declared by the Ghana Education Service for both elementary schools and senior high schools (Ghana Education Service, 2007). Each of these provides the basis of curriculum development for senior high schools in Ghana.
Ghana’s Ministry of Education state that Social Studies at the Senior High School level is concerned with equipping the students with an integrated body of knowledge, skills and attitudes that will help the student develop a broader perspective of Ghana and the world.
The subject probes the past and provides knowledge for the learners to understand his or her society and be able to solve personal and societal problems.
The subject has been divided into three sections each of which focus on the environment, government and stability, social and economic development (Ministry of Education, 2007).
Social Studies curriculum is based on key concepts such as democracy, justice, rights and responsibilities, identity and diversity. Teachers use topical, political and social issues to bring Social Studies content to life.
These content areas develop in students’ key citizenship skills needed for research, discussion as well as debate sessions (Bining & Bining, 1952). The Social Studies curriculum used in junior high schools aims at developing in students the ability to participate in their communities meaning fully and wider societies as informed citizens (Ministry of Education 2007).
The purpose of active citizens is to teach students to work together and take practical actions using their knowledge and understanding in Social Studies to contribute to the better society locally, nationally and globally (Bath, 1983).
For example, after learning about human rights, diversity and inequality, learners might decide to set up a project to address racism in their school or local community.
Among the many agencies available for Social Studies education are the family, peer group, mass media, the church and the school (Cleary, 2001). Of all these, the school appears to be the most potent force in the Ghanaian society driving the course of Social Studies.
For instance, because of the newness of democratic living in the Ghanaian system, one cannot guarantee that the various family units can efficiently inset the ideas of our form of democracy in the youth. Similarly, one cannot dispute the fact that most of the youth do not have access to the mass media.
The same may apply to the church. On the contrary, almost every youth is expected by law to acquire at least basic education (Constitution of Ghana, 1992).
It is for this reason why Cleary (2001) suggest that schools (senior high schools) are powerful weapon used to ensure that majority of the youth have a taste of Social Studies education in Ghana. The past 50 years have witnessed a number of studies that have attempted to understand why learners either like or dislike Social Studies.
These studies have tried to identify and measure student’s attitude about Social Studies and predict what influence their performance related to this area of the school curriculum (Corbin,1994; Curry & Hughes, 1965; Fraser, 1981; Inskeep & Rowland, 1963; McTear & Blaton, 1975).
Through the years, ongoing changes in curriculum design, teaching methodology, and administrative practices may have helped to improve students’ performance on Social Studies (Shaughnessy & Haladyna, 1985). However, most learners still perceive Social Studies classes as dull, boring, and irrelevant to their lives which seems to affect their performance all the time.
If the Social Studies curriculum is to continue to have support from school administrators, politicians, and the general public, it is desirable to have positive student attitudes towards the subject matter. This is important because it is quite possible that negative attitudes toward Social Studies could ultimately result in a sharp decline in the performance of learners.
Unfortunately, previous research indicates that young students are not positive about Social Studies and find it irrelevant for future careers (Schug, Todd, & Beery,1982).
Historically, when elementary and high school learners were surveyed, the most dominant negative perception was that Social Studies was boring and had little relevance to their lives. Femandez, Massey and Dombush (2006) conducted one of the earliest surveys regarding student attitudes towards Social Studies in the San Francisco Public Schools.
They found that students in grades 9 through 12 ranked Social Studies last in importance when compared to other core subjects such as English and mathematics. The participants described Social Studies as confusing and having little relationship to their future.
Social Studies, seeks to deliver problem-posing educational experience which challenges the learner’s critical thinking skills, creative skills, problem solving skills and literacy skills.
Creating an experiential learning environment through the use of motivational strategies enables the learner to undertake projects, express ideas through discussions and debates and exposes the learner to ask questions which aids in understanding.
Inculcating motivational strategies in the teaching and learning of Social Studies motivate the learners, arouses their interests whilst enabling them to put in much energy during the learning process.
The experiential learning environment creates a collaborative relationship between teachers and learners, showing them more as partners in the learning process with the aim of achieving learning goals where teaching, teaches the teacher.
It challenges the learner to find information for himself, creates space for the learner to draw ideas from different disciplines and transfer knowledge to real-life situations.
Motivation has been used as a psychological tool to encourage learners to increase academic performance in schools.
The process of creating basic motivational conditions, generating initial motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation has been found to be the best strategy to bring about effective learning (Crookes, 1991; Dorney, 2001). This has been confirmed by scholars who have theorized the motivational strategies in teaching and learning (Crookes, 1991; Dorney, 2001).
In many Junior High schools in Ghana, you can find learners outside the classroom while a teacher is teaching and even far away from the school environment during school hours.In addition to that some learners dislike some subjects for the reason that they are difficult and sometimes even tend to avoid the teacher of the subject concerned.
The term motivation has been defined by several scholars as follows: Guay (2010) defines motivation as “the reasons underlying behaviour”.
Broussard and Garrison (2004) see it as “the attribute that moves us to do or not to do something”. Kleinginna (1981) defines motivation as an internal state or condition (sometimes described as a need, desire, or want) that serves to activate or energize behaviour and give it direction.
Dorney (2000) defined motivation as an abstract, hypothetical concept that people use whole range of motives – from financial incentives, e.g. a raise in money to idealistic belief that explains why they do what they do.
In associations to definitions given, motivation can also be defined as the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal and elicits, controls, and sustains certain goal directed behaviours.
Motivational strategies are defined as “instructional interventions applied by the teacher to elicit and stimulate students’ motivation” (Guilloteaux & Dörnyei, 2008, 57).
According to the literature motivation can either be intrinsic or extrinsic. Deci (1999) defines intrinsic motivation as the motivation that emanate from personal enjoyment, interest, or pleasure while extrinsic motivation as the force from outside.
While intrinsic motivation is based on taking pleasure in an activity, extrinsic motivation occurs with an expectation of external rewards and common extrinsic motivations are rewards like money, grades and threats of punishment.
From the above description of Social Studies and motivation in both Ghana and the world at large, one could attest to the fact that, an exploration into using motivational strategies to improve upon the student attitudes towards the learning of Social Studies has a great effect on academic performance.
During the macro-teaching program instituted by the University of Ghana in collaboration with Ghana Education Service, the researcher was posted to Asesewa R/C Basic School in the Upper Manya Krobo District of the Eastern Region of Ghana. The researcher was attached to the Junior High School cluster.
As part of the macro-teaching program, a mentee has to observe his/her mentor and co-mentee. Through this, the researcher observed learner(s) attitude during Social Studies lessons as well as other subjects and found out that they show less concern towards Social Studies lessons.
When learners were questioned as to why they don’t have interest in Social Studies in particular, they gave their reasons as follow; their contributions in the classroom are always not appreciated, the teacher’s voice is not audible, lesson delivery becomes dull and not entertaining.
Lastly, they said they were always penalized whenever they gave wrong answers to questions which demoralized and also made them feel uncomfortable whenever the teacher is in class.
From the above, it was obvious that the learners were not interested in the Social Studies because of lack of motivation from the teacher who taught the subject. Perhaps, the teacher didn’t know the effects of these actions it had on the academic performance of the learners.
It is against this background that the researcher decided to undertake the study so as to encourage the use of motivational strategies to improve upon the attitudes of the Basic seven learners of Asesewa R/C JHS towards the study of Social Studies.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The government commits huge amounts of tax payer’s money towards education in Ghana every year. This, she does by way of paying teacher’s salaries, provision of school blocks, teaching and learning resources, furniture and many others.
When that has been done, it is envisaged that teachers will reciprocate that by doing their part to justify the investment made. They are expected to do that by adopting every appropriate media in their lessons so as to ensure higher learning outcomes.
Unfortunately, most teachers do not do what is expected of them so as to ensure higher learning outcome. Researches have indicated that pupils or learners do not do well academically because teachers either consciously or unconsciously do not motivate their pupils or learners.
As explained by Crookes (1991) and affirmed by Dorney (2001), the process of creating basic motivational conditions, generating initial motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation has been found to be the best strategy to bring about effective learning. This has been confirmed by scholars who have theorized the motivational strategies in teaching and learning (Crookes, 1991; Dorney, 2001).
The poor attitudes of students towards the study of Social Studies in Asesewa R/C JHS, Basic seven is an unsatisfactory scene. It has resulted in the poor academic performance of learners.
Social Studies as a core subject in the Junior High School level suggest the importance the government, parents and learners themselves attach to the study. The phenomena increase in student attitudes towards the study of Social Studies in Asesewa R/C JHS should not be allowed to remain for too long unattended to.
There is the need to adopt motivational strategies to improve upon the attitudes of students towards the study of Social Studies of pupils in Basic seven of Asesewa R/C JHS. There is a general belief that whenever learners perform poorly in their courses it suggest that the teacher has not really taught them well. People hardly look at other factors.
The researcher through his careful observation identified learners’ poor attitude towards the studying of Social Studies at Asesewa R/C JHS, Basic seven (7) as a problem that needs to be solved through motivational strategies. This has prompted the researcher to adopt motivational strategies to curb the poor attitude of learners towards the study of Social Studies.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of the study is to use motivational strategies to help learners develop interest in the studying of Social Studies among the basic seven students of Asesewa R/C JHS.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The following objectives guided the study.
i.To examine the major causes of learners’ poor attitude towards Social Studies.
ii.To assess the strategy that can be used to stimulate learners’ interest.
iii.To explore the activities that can be used to create safe classroom for learning Social Studies.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
i.What are the major causes of learners’ poor attitude towards Social Studies?
ii.What strategy can be used to stimulate learners’ interest?
iii.What activities can be used to create safe classroom for learning Social Studies?
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The study will go a long way to improve the academic performance of students in the subject. This is because it will help teachers to find the need in adopting motivational strategies in teaching the subject. Secondly, the study will be a reference material for teachers and anyone who will like to undertake a research on similar study.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
In the course of the study, the researcher encountered a lot of difficulties, for instance, language was a barrier. Some people could not express themselves well in the English language. Also, some teachers and learners didn’t see the whole essence of the study. Again, there were absenteeism on the part of learners.
DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY
This problem may be present in other schools but to make the work of the researcher fruitful, the research work was limited to the Asesewa R/C JHS, basic seven as that is where the problem was found.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This section of the chapter discussed how the study was organized. The chapter one has to do with the following sub-headings: Background to the study, Statement of the problem, Purpose of the study, Objective of the Study, Research questions, Significance of the study,
LIMITATION AND DELIMITATION
The second chapter deals with the review of related literature. This is followed by researcher methodology as the third chapter. The fourth chapter consists of analysis of data and discussions. The last chapter of the study covers summary, conclusion and recommendation.
Forward to Chapter Two
Forward to Chapter Three
SOURCE: bbcpulse.com