EFFECT OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING APPROACH ON ACADEMIC MOTIVATION, ACHIEVEMENT IN ENGLISH AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION AMONG COUNTY CO-EDUCATIONAL SECONDARY SCHOOLS, NAKURU COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

A lot of scholarly research articles have lauded the positive significant contribution of Cooperative Learning Approach (CLA) and its effect on student‟s academic achievement. The objectives of the study were to: determine the effect of CLA on student‟s academic motivation in English in Public Co-Educational County Secondary schools in Nakuru County Kenya; examine its effect on Public Co-Educational County Secondary schools student‟s perception of their classroom environment, and to establish its effect on students‟ achievement in English in Public Co-Educational County Secondary schools in Nakuru County Kenya. The study further sought to establish the moderating effect of gender on the dependent variables. The study was guided by cooperative learning integrative theories of motivation. The theoretical framework was based on motivational theories and Slavin (2006) Research on Co-operative Learning. The study adopted quasi experimental design, based on Solomon Four- group, Nonequivalent

Control Group Design. The target populations were students and teachers from the four Public Co-Educational County Secondary schools of Nakuru County. The accessible population was 766 form three students in the four schools. The study further used simple random sampling in the selection of schools and purposive sampling to select the form three class to participate in the study. A sample size of 242 from three students and four teachers of English was used. The study involved two Experimental groups, E vii

1 and E 2 which were taught through CLA method and two Control groups, C 1 and C 2 which were taught through the Conventional methods. Three instruments were used to collect quantitative data namely; English Achievement Test (EAT); Students‟ Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ), Student Perception Guide (SPG) of their classroom environment while Teachers Perception Guide(TPG) and Student Interview Guide (SIG) were used to collect qualitative data. Pilot testing of the instruments, EAT, SMQ, and SPG was done in one Public Co-Educational County Secondary schools within Nakuru County that had similar character traits as the sampled schools. Cronbach‟s alpha coefficient was used to determine the reliability of EAT, SPG and SMQ. A reliability coefficient of 0.812 for EAT, 0.801 for SPG and 0.789 for SMQ were obtained, hence the instruments were acceptable. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 24). The differences between the group means was analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, ANCOVA and statistical significance tested at alpha=0.05. The study found out that there was statistically significant effect of cooperative learning approach on students‟ academic motivation in English in public co-education secondary schools in Nakuru, County Kenya (F(1,126)=737.625, P<0.05). It was also found that there was statistically significant effect of cooperative learning approach on students‟ achievement in English in public co-educational county secondary schools in Nakuru, County Kenya (F(1,216)=113043.974, p<0.05). The study further found that gender of the students had a statistically significant moderating effect on the relationship between cooperative learning approach and students‟ perception of classroom environment as well as students‟ achievement of English in public co-educational secondary schools in Nakuru, County Kenya. The findings of the study would be beneficial to teacher training colleges and universities, in incorporate CLA in their pre-service teacher training as they shift and prepare teachers to the new Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) and English teachers to adopt CLA as an instructional strategy that would help improve the performance of the subject.