EFFECTS OF GROUP LEARNING STRATEGIES ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TO GEOGRAPHY

Peter Adewale Amosun

Department of Teacher Education

University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

E.mail: amosun2002@gmail.com; pa.amosun@mail.ui.edu.ng

ABSTRACT

Geography as a subject is seen to be wide in nature and scope. This fact appears to make both teachers and students in Nigeria and elsewhere have negative attitude towards geography. This has eventually led to poor performance in the subject. This study, therefore, determined the effect of three group learning strategies on students’ attitude to geography in Ibadan. Three hundred and sixty students participated in the study from eight schools which were purposively selected and randomly assigned to treatment. Seven hypotheses were tested at P<.05. Data were collected using a test instrument measuring students’ attitude to geography questionnaire administered on the subjects.  Findings from the study show that group learning strategies, especially integrated group learning and cooperative learning strategies helped in improving the students’ attitude to geography better than mastery learning and control group. The high mathematical ability students performed better than low ability ones but gender has no difference in the study. The implications of these findings were discussed in the paper.