Improving the study behaviour of Ghanaian senior high school students through counselling

Abstract

Despite the importance of study skills counselling, students in Ghana are not explicitly taught how to study. This study, therefore, explored the effects of study skills counselling on the study behaviour of senior high school students in the Ho Municipality of Ghana. The quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test control group design was adopted for the study. The target population of the study consisted of all senior high school form one students. A sample of 40 respondents was selected through the simple random sampling technique. A study behaviour inventory was used in gathering the data. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using independent samples t-test. The findings revealed that study skills counselling significantly improved the study behaviour of participants when compared with the control group. It was also discovered that study skills counselling had significant effects on all the five components of study behaviour at post-test. In contrast, the results indicated that gender did not have significant influence on study behaviour at post-test. Based on the findings, it was recommended that study skills counselling be adopted as a viable approach for improving study behaviour among senior school students so as to enhance their academic achievement. Implications for counselling were also provided.