A Model for Explaining Student Achievement in Social Studies Course

Abstract

This study is aimed at showing how learning styles and strategies of elementary and middle school students taking a Social Studies course are explained, along with their attitudes towards the course, and their achievement during the course. The study group consisted of 320 students (172 female and 148 male) attending elementary and middle schools in Turkey "The Learning Styles Scale", "The Learning Strategies Scale" and "The Attitude Scale for the Social Studies Course" were used for data collection, while "report card grades" were used for determining the achievement level in the Social Studies course. Within the framework of variables, a basic model was tested by means of path analysis included in the structural equation modeling. It was concluded that the variables learning styles, learning strategies, and attitudes towards the course collectively explained positively the achievement of students in the course.