JIGSAW III COOPERATIVE TEACHING STRATEGY AND STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN MATHEMATICS IN EASTERN OBOLO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

The study was carried out to investigate the effect of jigsaw III cooperative teaching strategy on the academic performance of students in Mathematics in Eastern Obolo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. In order to achieve this purpose, two objectives, two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The design for the study was quasi-experimental design. The population for the study consisted of all the 1,322 SS1 Mathematics students in the 4 public secondary schools in Eastern Obolo Local Government Area. The sample for the study was 108 SS1 students. Simple random sampling technique was used for the selection. A researcher-made instrument tagged Mathematics Performance Test (MPT); which was subjected to face and content validity by experts in Measurement and Evaluation, was employed for obtaining data for the study. A reliability coefficient of 0.81 was obtained for the instrument using Kuder-Richardson 20 formula. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while independent t-test was used for testing the hypotheses. The findings of this study showed that there is a significant difference in the mean performance scores of Mathematics students taught the concept of Geometry using Jigsaw III and conventional teaching strategies. It was also revealed that there is no significant difference in the mean performance scores of male and female students taught the concept of Geometry using Jigsaw III cooperative teaching strategy. Based on the findings of the study, It was recommended among others that Mathematics teachers should fully incorporate Jigsaw III cooperative teaching strategy in their teaching-learning process to help boost students’ performance in Mathematics irrespective of their gender.