EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND FIELD TRIP STRATEGIES ON JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF AND ATTITUDE TO MULTICULTURAL CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL STUDIES

ABSTRACT

The growing spate of ethno-religious crisis and insurgency that characterise the Nigerian polity have been traced partially to inadequacies in the teaching of multicultural concepts in social studies. The teaching and learning of these concepts through cooperative learning and field trip strategies could discourage discrimination and promote mutual respect for other cultures. A number of studies had been carried out on cooperative learning and field trip strategies which confirmed their effectiveness on student achievement but majority of such studies had been limited to mathematics, geography, sciences and environmental education with little consideration for multicultural education. This study, therefore, determined the effects of cooperative learning and field trip strategies on junior secondary school students‘ knowledge of and attitude to multicultural concepts in social studies. It further determined the moderating effects of ethnic origin and religion.

The pretest-posttest, control group, quasi-experimental design with a 3x2x2 factorial matrix was adopted. Participants were three hundred and fifty-two junior secondary III students purposively selected from six secondary schools in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Participants were randomly assigned to cooperative learning strategy, field trip strategy and control groups; while treatment lasted ten weeks. Five instruments used were: Multicultural Concepts Knowledge Test (r=0.82), Multicultural Concept Attitude Scale (r= 0.86); Teachers‘ Instructional Guide for Cooperative Learning Strategy, Teachers‘ Instructional Guide for Field Trip Strategy and Teachers Instructional Guide for the conventional method. Seven null hypotheses were tested at p