Enhancing Students’ Academic Performance in Wave Through Cooperative and Discussion Based Instructional Strategies

Abstract

The concept of waves is a fundamental aspect of physics education, and its understanding is important for students’ academic performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. However, students often struggle to understand wave concepts leading to their poor performance. The main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Cooperative and discussion instructional strategies on performance of Senior Secondary School Student two (SS2) in Waves. The study adopted quasi experimental research design, specifically pre-test, post-test and non-equivalent control group. The population for the study was 5,240 drawn from all the public senior secondary schools in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State. The Sample size for the study was 120 SS2 students who were offering physics from three intact classes. Physics Performance Test (PPT) was used as instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated by experts and its reliability index was 0.81. The data obtained from the study were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed among others that both cooperative and discussion strategies significantly enhanced the performance of students in waves. Based on that it was recommended among others that active learning strategies such as cooperative and discussion strategies should be adopted by physics teachers to teach physics in secondary schools because the methods promote student engagement, collaboration, critical thinking, and deeper understanding of Physics concepts.