Impact of Cooperative Learning Approach on Senior Secondary School Students Performance in Mathematics

Abstract

This research work investigated the impact of cooperative learning approach on the performance of secondary school students in mathematics using some selected secondary schools. It employed one hundred and twenty students selected from the entire population of students offering mathematics at the senior secondary two (SS 2) levels of the selected schools. Quasi- experimental research design was used and the samples were grouped into groups A and B named experimental and control groups respectively. The experimental period was four weeks with a total number of sixteen hours of lesson delivery for each group. The experimental group was taught using the cooperative learning approach while the control group was taught using the conventional method. A Mathematics Test of Assimilation (MTAS) was administered to the groups and the result was analyzed using ttest. The analysis revealed that the experimental group has a mean score that is significantly higher than that of the control group (p<0.05). It was also observed that sex difference or gender has no significant influence on the performance of students in mathematics when taught using or not using cooperative learning approach (p<0.05). The research generally revealed that the experimental group performed better than the control group. This implies that cooperative learning approach has significant effect on students‟ performance in secondary school mathematics. It is therefore recommended that teachers of mathematics should work together toward the improvement of students‟ performance in mathematics.

Ife PsychologIA, 20(2), September 2012