ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to determine the effect of cooperative learning instructional strategy on the attitude and performance of SSII biology students of different cognitive styles in Giwa educational zone Kaduna State Nigeria. The design is a pretest posttest/quasi experimental design. The population of the study comprises all the private secondary schools in the zone.The total number of students was 1,915. Four schools were purposively selected to serve as experimental and control school respectively. Four intact classes were used.The sample comprises 92 students. Three instruments were used to generate the data. Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT) with a reliability coefficient of 0.87 was used to establish the cognitive style of the subjects. The Genetic Performance Test (GPT) and the Cooperative Learning Attitude Scale (CLAS) with a reliability coefficient of 0.76 and 0.83 respectively were used to measure the performance and the attitude of the subjects after treatment. The experimental groups were taught using cooperative Learning Instructional Strategy while the control group was taught using the lecture method. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, t –test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed, (a) A significant difference in the mean performance score between the cooperative learning group and the lecture group (b) no significant difference between field dependent subject and field independent subject in both homogenous and heterogeneous groups (c) No significant difference in the attitude of field dependent and field independent in both homogenous and heterogeneous groups. Based on these finding, it was concluded that cooperative learning instructional strategy enhanced the performance of senior secondary school students of both field dependent and independent cognitive style in genetics. The following recommendation were made (a) Cooperative Learning Instructional Strategy should be used to help the field dependent learners learn effectively (b)Works