Effects of Individualised and Cooperative Reflective Journal Writing Stratrgies on Secondary School Students’ Achievement in Biology in Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of individualised and cooperative reflective journal writing strategies on secondary school students’ achievement in Biology. The study adopted a pretest- posttest, control group, quasi-experimental design of a 3x3x2 factorial matrix. The participants consisted of 208 senior secondary school II students from two Local Government Areas in Kwara State. The two instruments for data collection were: Students’ Achievement Test in biology and Verbal Ability Test. Three hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using Analysis of Covariance and Sheffe post-hoc test. The result revealed that individualised and cooperative reflective journal writing strategies improved the achievement of students in Biology (F (2,189) = 111.560, P<.05, η2 =.541). It was also found that students exposed to cooperative reflective journal writing strategy had higher achievement mean score of ( = 19.13) than those exposed to individualised reflective journal writing strategy (  = 18.72). The mean score (  = 10.67) of those exposed to conventional method was the least. It was recommended that teachers should adopt individualized reflective journal writing and cooperative reflective journal writing strategies to improve the achievement of students in senior secondary school in Biology.