Collaborative Learning Strategy and Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Social Studies in South-West, Nigeria

This study examines collaborative learning strategy and academic achievement of secondary school students in Social Studies in South-West, Nigeria. The study is necessary as a result of poor performance and achievement of students in schools due to conventional method used to teach them. However, collaborative learning strategy, if properly handled could go a long way to improve students’ achievement in Social Studies. The study adopts quasi-experimental pretest-post test control group design. The population for the study comprised all Junior Secondary School Students in South-West, Nigeria. The sample consisted of 400 Junior Secondary School Class II students randomly selected from sampled schools. Simple random sampling was used to select two co-educational schools from Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, Osun and Oyo states respectively. Simple random sampling was used to select 40 students from each school (20 males and 20 females). Simple random sampling was also used to allocate the schools in each State to experimentaland control groups. The instrument used was the Social Studies Achievement Test (SSAT) designed by the researcher. It was validated by experts in relevant disciplines and validity of the instrument was determined through face and content validity procedures. The test-re-test and internal consistency methods of reliability were adopted and the reliability coefficient of 0.69 and 0.71 were obtained
respectively. Two hypotheses were generated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The data collected were analyzed using ANCOVA statistical tool. The result shows a significant difference between the achievement mean scores of students in the collaborative learning strategy and control groups.(F-cal=1620.442,Ftable= 3.00,P=0.05).The result also shows no significant difference in gender based achievement mean scores.(F=1.952,P>005). Male and female students performed equally in collaborative learning strategy in Social Studies. It was recommended that collaborative learning strategy should be used to teach in Secondary Schools to enhance the achievement of students in Social Studies.