Effects of Jigsaw II and Students’ Team-Achievement Division on Performance in Secondary Schools Economics in Ilorin West Local Government, Nigeria

Abstract

The knowledge of Economics plays a vital role in fostering societal development. In spite of its importance, few of the students who took Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations consistently have grade C and above each year. This performance has been traced majorly to the use of teacher centered strategies. This study aimed at determining the effects of Jigsaw II and Students’ Team-Achievement Division (STAD) on Performance in Secondary Schools Economics in Ilorin West LGA. The objectives were to: (i) investigate academic performance of students in Economics (ii) examine the effect of Jigsaw II instructional strategy in teaching Economics (iii) examine the effect of STAD in teaching Economics (iv) determine the effects of treatments Jigsaw II and STAD instructional strategies, and (v) ascertain if there was an interaction effect of gender and treatments on students’ performance in Economics in Ilorin West LGA, Nigeria. The design adopted for the study was a pre-test post-test, control group quasi-experimental design. The population of the study was all public senior secondary schools in Ilorin West LGA while the target population was students offering Economics. Using the simple random technique, three schools in Ilorin West LGA were drawn after which SSS II students were purposely sampled for the experiment. The instrument for the study was an Economics Performance Test which was face and content validated through expert judgment. Its reliability was determined using parallel forms reliability statistics with a reliability coefficient of 0.82. Research questions were analysed using descriptive statistics of mean (x̅) and skewness while the hypotheses were tested using ANCOVA statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The study concluded that STAD is effective for improving students’ academic performance in Economics. This implies that learner-centered strategy can complement other strategies to enhance teaching-learning effectiveness in Economics. The study therefore recommended that teachers should use STAD and Jigsaw II in teaching Economics, authors should make for more learner centered activities in Economics textbooks while school administrators should map-out incentives as well as recognition for teachers who go beyond the traditional method of teaching in implementing the secondary school Economics curriculum, among others.