SOURCE:

Faculty: Education
Department: Human Kinetics And Health Education

CONTRIBUTORS:

Igwilo, S.N;
Okafor, J.O

ABSTRACT:

This study is on effect of cooperative learning method on sexual health knowledge and attitudes of adolescents in Anambra State secondary schools. The inability of adolescents to acquire adequate knowledge regarding sexual health may be due to the method of teaching used which are mainly teacher-centred methods such as lecture, discussion, Socratic, demonstration teaching methods among others. Therefore, students’ centered method is recommended in today’s teaching and learning and cooperative learning method is one of them. To determine the effects, mean different and as well as scores of adolescents in Anambra State secondary schools exposed to cooperative learning method on sexual health knowledge and attitudes were compared with the scores of control group. Quasi experimental research design was used for the study. Six research questions and eight hypotheses guided the study. A total of 140 senior secondary two (SS2) students were sampled from population of 20,342students using simple random sampling technique. Four secondary schools in Anambra state (two urban and two rural schools) were sampled. Two schools, one from urban and one from rural areas were exposed to cooperative learning method on sexuality education and the other two schools were exposed to control method for six weeks. The instruments for data collection, Sexual Health Knowledge Test (SHKT) and Sexual Health Attitudes Questionnaire (SHAQ) were developed by the researcher through review of related literature, use of text books, interviews of experts and the researcher’s experience. The face and content validity of the instruments were established through the judgments of three experts. The reliability of the instruments was determined through data obtained from the trial testing of the two instruments SHKT and SHAQ, the calculated Kr20 estimate obtained was 0.83 for SHKT and the reliability coefficient obtained for SHAQ was 0.82. Analyses of data were carried out before and after the treatment using Mean, Standard Deviation (SD) and Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA).The findings of the study among others revealed that cooperative learning method improved sexual health knowledge and attitudes of the subjects as depicted by the mean gain scores recorded more than the control group. Male adolescents exposed to cooperative learning method had better sexual health knowledge mean gain score (X = 37.27) than their female counterparts (X = 32.46) exposed to the same method. But the female adolescents exposed to cooperative learning method had better sexual health attitude gained mean score than their male counterparts exposed to the same method. The effect of cooperative learning method on the mean sexual health knowledge and attitudes scores of adolescents in Anambra state secondary schools differ significantly using their post-test mean scores P< 0.05. There was no evidence of significant interaction effect of gender and location of study on sexual health attitude of subjects observed (F = 0.915, P = 0.457). It was recommended among other things that there is need to include cooperative learning method in handling sexual health education in the school curriculum at all levels of education in Nigeria.