Effect of Cooperative Teaching Strategy on Academic Performance of Low Achievers in Biology among Senior Secondary School Students in Zaria LGA, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the use of Cooperative teaching strategy in the teaching and learning of biology to low achievers among senior secondary schools in Zaria LGA. Cooperative teaching is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different schools of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. This study seeks to determine the effectiveness of Cooperative teaching strategy and conventional learning strategy on the academic performance low achievers in senior secondary school II students taught Biology concepts. These included two instructional groups (cooperative and conventional classroom groups), ability (high and low), and repeated testing (pretest and posttest). The population of study was made up of 947 SS II students from where a sample of 120 students was randomly selected. The instrument used for the collection of data was Biology Performance Test (BPT). All the data collected were analyzed with analysis of co-variance statistic. Two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance and the major findings of the study included: a significant higher achievement test scores of students in cooperative learning group than those in conventional classroom; a significant higher achievement test scores of all students of varying abilities in cooperative learning group than those in traditional classroom. The research into cooperative learning does not show that having students work together in a cooperative manner is a magic device that will solve all classroom problems. What it does say is that those problems probably have a better chance of being solved in cooperative than in competitive or an individualistic setting.