Looking for a More Facilitative Cooperative Learning Strategy for Biology: Students’ Team Achievement Division or Jigsaw?

Abstract

Aims: The study determined the effects of Jigsaw and Students’ Team Achievement Division (STAD) cooperative learning strategies on the achievements of secondary school biology students. Study Design: The research adopted the non randomized, pretest – posttest control group quasi experimental design. Place and Duration of the Study: The study took place in Wamba LGA of Nasarawa state of Nigeria. The study lasted for 6 weeks in 2012. Methodology: Data were collected from a sample of 188 students comprising of 95 boys and 93 girls from 6 randomly selected schools. A 30 item instrument called Biology Students Achievement Test (BSAT) developed by the researchers with a reliability coefficient of 0.84 using Kuder-Richardson formula 21 was used for data collection. The schools were grouped into 3 with 2 schools per group and assigned randomly into 1 control and 2 experimental groups. The control was taught using the Lecture method while cooperative learning strategies were used in experimental groups. Results and Discussion: Data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation to answer the research question and ANCOVA and Pairewise analyses at 0.05 levels of significance to test the hypothesis. The result shows that there is a significant difference between the mean achievement of students taught using lecture and cooperative learning strategies; STAD was found to be superior to Jigsaw strategy. Conclusion and Recommendations: Both STAD and Jigsaw learning strategies facilitated learning of biology in secondary school in the study area. However, STAD was found to facilitate learning more than Jigsaw. It was recommended that teachers should use the STAD strategy in teaching and that seminar, workshops and conferences should be organized to train teachers. The curriculum should be reviewed to reflect the method while book writers should be encouraged to incorporate the method in their books.