Abstract

The essence of this study was to determine how the adoption of cooperative learning as an instructional skill for teaching Mathematics influences students’ achievement and attitude towards learning of Mathematics. The study also determined how moderating variables like sex and ability affect students learning and performance in Mathematics when cooperative learning is used as an instructional skill. To guide this study, five (5) hypotheses were raised and tested at 0.05level of significance. Two instruments were developed and validated for data collection. They are Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) and Attitude towards Mathematics Inventory (ATGI). The t-test for sample statistics was used to test for the hypotheses on performance and Mann Whitney U-test tool of least significant difference was used to test the attitude of the students taught with cooperative learning skill and traditional method. The major findings of the study included a significant higher achievement test scores of students in cooperative learning group than those in traditional classroom; a significant higher attitude scores of students in cooperative learning group than those in traditional classroom; a significant higher achievement test scores of all students of varying abilities in cooperative learning group than those in traditional classroom; a non-significant difference in achievement test scores between the male and female students in the cooperative learning group and non-significant interaction effect between sex and ability, sex and method and ability and method. By these results, the researchers recommend that cooperative learning strategy should be incorporated and adopted in teaching of Mathematics in junior secondary schools.