EFFECT OF JIGSAW INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY ON FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING STUDENTS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH-WEST, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study examined the effect of jigsaw instructional strategy on Financial Accounting students’ academic achievement in Colleges of Education in south-west Nigeria with consideration for gender sensitivity. To achieve the aim of the study, two research questions were raised and three hypotheses were formulated and guided the study. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design with a 2 x 2 factorial matrix. The population consisted of 2,232 NCE II Business Education students in all the public Colleges of Education in South-west, Nigeria. The sample size comprised 331 NCE II Business Education students from two Colleges of Education and the sample was selected using a simple random sampling technique in a multi-stage procedure. The Financial Accounting Achievement Test (FAAT) was the instrument validated and used for data collection. The reliability of FAAT was ensured using the KR-20 technique and it yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.92. The data collected were analyzed using the mean and standard deviation to answer research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that there is a significant main effect of treatments on students’ achievement in Financial Accounting (p < 0.05) because students taught Financial Accounting with the jigsaw strategy had higher academic achievement than those taught with the conventional lecture method. It was also found that there is no significant effect of gender on students’ academic achievement in Financial Accounting (p > 0.05). The study concluded that the jigsaw instructional strategy is more effective than the conventional lecture method because it helped to improve students’ academic achievement in Financial Accounting. It was recommended among others, that business educators at the college level should employ a jigsaw instructional strategy for teaching Financial Accounting to enhance students’ academic achievement in the subject.