Effect of Cooperative Learning and Peer Teaching Strategies on Senior Secondary School Students’ Academic Achievement of Geometrical Concepts in Mathematics

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of the cooperative learning and the peer teaching strategies on students’ academic achievement of geometrical concepts in Mathematics in senior secondary schools in Delta State of Nigeria. Three research questions were raised to guide the study and three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The pretest posttest control quasi experimental research design was employed in this study. The population of the study was two thousand nine hundred and fifty-four (2 954) SS I students in Oshimilli North Local Government Area of Delta State.  The sample consisted of 289 SS1 students which is a 10% representation of the population. They were selected using the multi-stage sampling technique. Three (3) public and three (3) private schools were selected and their intact classes used. The control group was made up of two intact classes of 105 students. The experimental group 1 (cooperative learning strategy) had 91 students in two intact classes while experimental group 2 (peer teaching strategy) had 93 students in two intact classes. The instrument used for data collection was a Geometry Achievement Test (GAT). The reliability of GAT was established using Kudder-Richardson formula 20 which yielded a coefficient of internal consistency of 0.79. Data were collected by administering the GAT as the pretest and the posttest. The data obtained were analyzed using mean. Standard deviation and Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The results of the study revealed a significant effect of treatment on students’ academic achievement of geometrical concepts in Mathematics. Students in the peer teaching strategy group performed significantly better than those in the cooperative learning strategy group in terms of academic achievement.  In addition, in terms of school ownership, students in both private and public schools in the peer teaching strategy group performed significantly better academically than those in the cooperative learning strategy group and the control group respectively. Moreover, there was no significant interaction effect of strategy, school ownership and gender on the academic achievement of students in geometrical concepts in Mathematics. Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that the peer teaching and the cooperative learning strategies leads to better academic achievement of geometrical concepts in Mathematics for students.  Therefore, it is recommended among others, that teachers of Mathematics in senior secondary schools should adopt the cooperative learning and peer teaching strategies in the teaching of Mathematics to enhance students’ academic achievement in geometrical concepts specifically, and in Mathematics generally.