EFFECT OF JIGSAW COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY ON MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

The performance of secondary school students in Mathematics in West African Senior School Certificate has improved slightly but needs more efforts in some areas like Algebra to attain its full heights. This situation has remained a source of concern to the researcher, parents and the nation at large. Against this background, the study wants to determine the effect of Jigsaw cooperative learning strategy on the academic achievement of secondary school students in mathematics. Two research questions and two null hypotheses provided a guide to this study. Quasi experimental design; specifically, the pre-test post-test non-randomized control group design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of the entire senior secondary two (SS11) in Aboh Mbaise local Government area in Imo state. The sample for the study is made up of 105 SS11 students. Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) was used for data collection and instructional tool was lesson plan. The instruments and the lesson plans were face and content validated by experts in Measurement and Evaluation, and secondary school mathematics teacher. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. From the findings presented and discussed, it is concluded that Jigsaw is more effective strategy that can be used to enhance academic achievement of students in mathematics. Based on the findings, it is also concluded that there is no influence of gender on mathematics achievement of senior secondary school students. Therefore, Jigsaw is gender friendly to teach mathematics to both male and female students. It is therefore recommended that Mathematics teachers should be encouraged to use jigsaw II co-operative learning strategy in their classrooms.