Cooperative Learning Strategy on Senior Secondary School Students’ Interest in Physics

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of cooperative learning strategy on students’ interest in physics in senior secondary schools in Ebonyi State. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The research design was quasi-experimental. The population of the study comprised 1887 senior secondary two students in Abakaliki Education Zone. Simple random sampling technique was used to sample 121 students for the study. The instrument for the study was Physics Interest Inventory (PII) which was adopted from Baggaley Interest Inventory by the researcher. The study was made up of two groups; the experimental and the control groups. The research questions were answered using Mean and Standard Deviation while Analysis of Co-variance was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study indicated that students of the experimental group had higher interest mean scores than those of the control group. Also, male of the experimental group and that of the control group displayed higher interest than their female counterparts. The researcher recommended that educational authorities should ensure that physics teachers employ appropriate learning strategy that could arouse students’ interest towards physics while teaching. This could be achieved through regular supervision and inspection of schools. The researcher equally advocated that educators of physics should plan for a review of curriculum that would be gender friendly and allow for student’s active involvement on task rather than making them passive learners.