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Received Oct 12, 2017; Accepted Dec 19, 2017
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1. Introduction
Education plays a pivotal role in maximizing individual’s potentials and is a prerequisite for meaningful and sustained national economy [1]. Even though the educationists had made efforts in improving teaching-learning processes, instructional designers are still searching and experimenting to get best methods for optimal academic performance of the students [2]. This is because, in the traditional approach of teaching, most of the class time is spent by teachers talking and students watching and listening, and cooperative learning appears to be discouraged [3]. Similarly, Johnson et al. [4] elucidated that, in individual learning, how the students perceive and interact with one another is a neglected aspect of instruction. Correspondingly, the knowledge of biology contributes to scientific literacy and helps to understand the world in which we live [5, 6]. However, the students’ learning performance and achievement in biology have been poor over recent years [7]. The poor performance and laboratory proficiency in biology are influenced by not having expository approaches that stand up to challenge the objectives of biology education [5, 8–10]. Thus, schools should be encouraged to adopt pedagogical practices that promote the active involvement of students’ learning [11]. One practice that has received widespread coverage over the past decades is cooperative, small-group learning [12]. This is a pedagogical practice that helps students to gain and create both academic and social relationships as well as to accomplish shared goals [13]. Through such kind of interaction, students learn to cross-examine issues, share ideas, elucidate differences, and construct new understandings [14]. Even though cooperative learning (CL) has revealed a number of integral functions, it has not been a far and broaden approach of teaching methodology in the study areas (Gassaye, Fert, and Kimer Dengay secondary schools). Correspondingly, research findings showed that very few teachers who implemented CL method could not even consider some aspects of the learners being organized on the basis of academic achievement, interest, and gender; these may in turn degrade and worsen the students’ perception towards CL activities. Correspondingly, researches like...