Nnadiebube Journal of Education

This study investigated the effects of cooperative and problem solving strategies on senior secondary schools students’ academic achievement in Economics in Anambra State, Nigeria. To achieve the aims of the study, three research questions were raised and three corresponding hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The design of the study was the quasi-experimental research design which adopted pre-test, treatment and post-test of non-equivalent group procedures. The population is 76,542 SSI – III students in all the 263 public secondary schools in Anambra State. The sample consisted of 125 senior secondary two (SS II) Economics students using purposive and cluster sampling techniques were used. The instrument used for the collection of data for this study was a researcher developed achievement test titled, Economics Achievement Test (EAT) which contained 30 items of multiple choice questions. The instrument was validated by three research specialists. Reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained using Kudder-Richardson 20 statistic (KR-20). The experiments and administration of pretest and posttest lasted for 6 weeks with the aid of four research assistants who were the regular Economics teachers in the selected schools. Afterwards, the researcher marked and scored the scripts and the computed scores were used for data analysis. Research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that both cooperative and problem solving strategies are effective in the improvement of students’ achievement in Economics. It was also revealed that male and female students achieved slightly the same scores when taught Economics using cooperative and problem solving strategies, but the difference between their mean scores was not significant. It was recommended among others that since the use of cooperative and problem solving strategies in teaching have been found to enhance achievement in Economics, teachers should be encouraged to employ these instructional methods more in the teaching of the subject.

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