Effects of collaborative learning and mathematics achievement on gender groupings of colleges of education in Ghana

Abstract

The study was conducted to find the effects of collaborative learning on gender groupings in the mathematics performance of Bachelor of Education (BED) students at the Colleges of Education in Ghana. The design for the study was experimental design, comprising 144 Mathematics students purposively selected from all Science and Mathematics colleges in Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions of Ghana. The quantitative data comprised questionnaire and test. The study variables were students who had been admitted into the colleges at the two regions purely for Mathematics and Science programs. The variables in this study comprised 9 groups: three all-male groups, three all-female groups, and three mixed groups. The instrument is composed of 20 questions covering the content area and testing the various levels of knowledge, understanding and application. Simple means, standard deviation and variance were used to answer research questions while, Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized for the testing of the hypotheses. The results indicated that students’ formative tests mean scores had no significant difference which implies that if students were working alone, they might obtain more or less similar results. The collaborative learning treatment, where the students worked in different gender groups, showed that there was a significant difference in their performance. Specifically, all-female groups obtained the highest mean score followed by mixed groups. In the mathematics achievement test, the results revealed that all male group performed better than the other two groups. The study recommended that tutors of mathematics in the Colleges of Education use collaborative learning in their various classrooms.