Analysis of study skills employed by Ghanaian high school science students

Abstract

This study was motivated by the desire to explore the study skills employed by science students in senior high schools (SHS) in the Cape Coast metropolis across the Central Region of Ghana. A total of 600 SHS second-year science students, 354 males, and 244 females, took part in the investigation. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design. The “Study Skills Scale†questionnaire was utilised for data collection to determine the kind of study skills employed by the science students, across gender, age range, and school-type. The arithmetic mean was used to establish the degree to which students employ study skills strategies in their learning. Similarly, the consequence of gender, age range, and school-type on the eight subscales of study skills strategies was determined using a one-way multivariate examination of variance. Findings from the investigation indicated that SHS science learners employ study skills strategies in their learning to a large extent for all the subscales of study skills strategies. However, female students employ the memory and concentration study skills strategies more effectively than their male counterparts; demographic variables, such as age range and school-type, do not influence students’ study skills significantly. The implications for this study for policy and practice were discussed.

Keywords: Academic performance, age range, gender, school-type, study skills, senior high school science students.