Effects of Cooperative Learning Strategy on Secondary School Students’ Achievement and Knowledge Retention in Biology

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of cooperative learning strategy on the achievement and knowledge retention of secondary II students in biology in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Two research questions and one hypothesis guided the study and quasi experimental research design was used. The population of the study was 24,459 secondary II students and a sample of 161 students comprising 78 males and 84 female were used drawn from four (4) co-educational boarding secondary schools through simple random sampling technique. Two schools were assigned to the experimental group while the other two schools were assigned to the control group through tossing of coin. The treatment group was exposed to learning of Biology with the cooperative learning strategy while the control group was exposed to learning of biology with the conventional approach. A Biology Achievement Test (BAT) was used to collect data for students’ achievement and was rearranged to collect data for knowledge retention. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypothesis was tested using ANCOVA at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that cooperative learning strategy is superior to conventional learning strategy in fostering high achievement and knowledge retention. It was recommended that biology teachers should adopt the cooperative learning strategy to improve students’ achievement and knowledge retention.

Keywords: Cooperative learning, learning together, knowledge retention, academic achievement.

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-32-07

Publication date: November 30^th 2021