Abstract
The study investigated the effect of jigsaw-based learning technique on retention ability of secondary school students in cell biology in Bauchi metropolis. The study had two objectives, two research questions and two null hypotheses. Quasi experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group design was employed for the study. The population of the study was all the 4,627 senior secondary school II students (SS II) offering Biology from the area of the study. Two schools were randomly selected out of the 287 Senior Secondary Schools in the metropolis with a total of 119. The two schools were randomly assigned to Control and Experimental group. Sixty four (64) students formed the experimental group and fifty five (55) constitutes the control group. The Cell Biology Achievement test (CBAT) of 30 multiple choice questions was used for data collection. Four experts validated the instrument (CBAT) in terms of face and content validity. The item which was pilot tested with 49 SSII Students from a public secondary school in Azare metropolis gave reliability coefficient of 0.87. The groups were subjected to teaching of cell biology (cell division) for three (3) weeks using jigsaw for experimental group and lectures for control group. Both the Experimental and the Control group were post-tested immediately after administering the treatment. Three weeks after the post-test, the students were re-tested in order to obtain the achievement and retention performance/scores of the students. Data collected were analyzed using mean score to answer the research questions and t-test to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study demonstrated that students that adopted jigsaw learning strategy have high retention ability as compared to those in conventional method. It was therefore concluded that the use of jigsaw learning strategy would help to improve the retention ability of students in biology. Based on this, it was recommended that in teaching difficult concepts in Biology, teachers should develop a paradigm that shift from lecture method which is teacher centered to Jigsaw learning strategy which is more of students’ centered.