The Effectiveness Of Group Work In Teaching And Learning Biology In The Selected Secondary Schools In Vihiga District, Kenya

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of group work in teaching and learning biology in the selected secondary schools in Vihiga division, Vihiga District, Kenya

Specific Objectives of the study were: find out the school related factors that hinder the implementation of group work in secondary schools, find out the different forms of group work

in secondary schools, and find out what the attitudes of students towards group work in

secondary schools.

The methods used for data collection were interview guides to the learners.

The findings revealed that The findings indicated that lack of teachers' efforts to form the groups

was the major factor that hindered implementation of group work since groups were mainly

formed by the teachers, the ideal form of group work was by students themselves and not the

teachers and that all the students had a positive attitude towards the formation of group work.

The study recommended that, government should make it a policy to encourage the formation of

group work as a teaching method especially in science subjects like biology which students

consider to be hard, teachers should encourage the students to form their own groups so long as

they are careful not to choose group members who are not serious with the intention of the group

formation. Students should be encouraged to form groups in order to encourage them to achieve good academic results in biology and indeed in other subjects