EFFECTS OF JIGSAW II AND STAD COOPERATIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES IN STUDENTS’ RETENTION IN ELEMENTARY HISTORY EDUCATION: A TRUE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

This study focused on the effect of Jigsaw II and Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) cooperative learning strategies on retention of Elementary History amongst Grade - VII students of Pakistan. Using true experimental pre-test to post-test equivalent groups replication technique with the delayed retention testing, ninety participants were randomly assigned class by class to one group each for Jigsaw II, STAD or conventional lecture-based instruction. A researcher generated 40-item retention test that was assessed for face validity by experts online and assessment for reliability was administered four weeks after the intervention. Results showed that there were statistically significant differences between groups with both cooperative learning strategies having higher means than traditional instruction on the delayed retention scores, Jigsaw II had the highest means, followed by STAD and the control group had the lowest results. Effect size analyses showed large and pedagogically meaningful effects of both cooperative models in comparison to conventional pedagogy with a moderate superiority of Jigsaw-2 over STAD. These results support the social constructivist assumptions about the efficacy of peer interaction, elaboration, and retrieval practice to improve long-term retention. Consequently, the empirical nature of the study has added further empirical data to an inadequately taught area of study within Pakistan and the necessity of implementing proper structured cooperative learning frameworks with the elementary History curriculum.