Abstract:

A wide variety of pedagogical methods and innovations are used in secondary schools to support teachers’ effectiveness and students’ academic performance. This has explained the need for pedagogical techniques to be a complete integration of concrete experiences, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. Consequently, to guarantee teaching and learning effectiveness in secondary schools, teachers were forced to use experiential learning strategies. Regrettably, this innovative pedagogy was ineffectively utilized by some secondary school teachers and learners in their classroom. Therefore, this paper analyzes the use of experiential learning strategies to enhance teaching effectiveness and students’ academic performance. The study utilized the cross sectional survey research design. Kolb’s experiential learning theory was used in the study which focused on 03 public grammar secondary schools in the Bamenda II Municipality. A sample of 80 teachers and 192 students were selected using convenient and simple random sampling techniques. Data for the study was collected using questionnaires and focus group discussions. The descriptive data was analyzed using percentages, mean and standard deviation and F-test statistics was used to verify the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that, teachers’ use of experiential learning strategies has significant positive effects on their teaching effectiveness in social science classroom by gender. Furthermore, teachers’ use of experiential learning strategies has significant positive effects on students’ academic performance in social science classroom by school. The study concluded that, teachers’ use of concrete experiences, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation based on experiential learning strategies like field trip, group work, role play and games significantly improved teaching effectiveness and students’ academic performance. Thus, it was recommended that, teachers of social sciences at the secondary school level should apply a variety of experiential learning strategies. The government should train and retrain teachers of social sciences through workshops and seminars on more innovative strategies of teaching such as experiential learning.

Keywords:

pedagogical innovations, secondary education, experiential learning strategies, teaching and learning effectiveness, Bamenda II Municipality.