TESTING THE EFFICACY OF CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY ON SENIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN PHYSICS IN KABBA BUNU EDUCATION ZONE, KOGI STATE, NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATORS

Abstract

The study was designed to investigate the effects of Cooperative Learning Strategy (CLS) on Senior Secondary Students’ Achievement in Physics in Kabba Bunu Education Zone, Kogi State, Nigeria. A pretest- posttest, non-equivalent control group, quasi–experimental research design was adopted.  45 students constituted the subjects in the experimental group and 50 students in the control group for the study. Two research questions and two null hypotheses, tested at the 0.05 level of significance, guided the study. The instrument for data collection was the Physics Achievement Test (PAT). The instrument was validated by three experts in Physics Education in Kabba Bunu Education Zone. The reliability of the PAT was found to be 0.85 using Kuder-Richardson’s formula. Mean and Standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while ANCOVA was used to test the hypotheses. In this study, the data revealed that using cooperative learning strategy has a positive impact on students‘ achievement in Physics. Students in the experimental made significantly better performance in Physics than students in the control group. Also, both male and female students in the experimental group achieved highly. There is no significant difference in the mean achievement scores of the male and female students in the experimental group. The cooperative learning strategy made Physics learning more interesting, easy and created friendship among students. It was recommended that cooperative learning strategy be adopted as a substitute to the traditional method in teaching Physics at senior secondary school level in Nigeria.