Effect of Cooperative Mastery Learning Approach on Secondary School Students Achievement based on Gender in Kirinyaga County, Kenya

Through the study of Physics, technological advancement promoting standard of living, creation of wealth, health and industrialization has been realized. The Kenyan government has put much effort to reduce gender disparity in achievement in physics in secondary schools. However, and despite these efforts, the desired outputs have not been realized. Though a number of factors may be responsible for this prevailing situation in secondary schools in Kenya, it is envisaged that inappropriate teaching approaches used in teaching physics contribute to gender disparity in achievement in physics. While cooperative mastery learning approach has been shown to reduce gender disparity in other science subjects’ studies addressing the effect of cooperative mastery learning approach towards student’s achievement in Physics based on gender are inadequate. Hence this study investigated the effects of Cooperative Mastery Learning Approach on secondary school students’ achievement in Physics based on gender in Kirinyaga County. Solomon’s four quasi experimental group design was used. The target population was 5850 form two Physics students in the secondary schools in Kirinyaga County, Kenya. A sample of 180 respondents was obtained from the population. Simple random sampling was used to draw the participating four schools from the purposively selected Sub-county schools. The assignment of selected schools to either experimental or control group was done by simple random sampling. The research instrument that was used was physics Achievement Test (PAT). The Reliability was tested by subjecting the instrument to a pilot study in a school in Embu County. Reliability coefficient for Physics Achievement Test was 0.798. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 was used for data analysis. The raw data obtained was analyzed descriptively using Mean, Standard deviation, percentages and inferentially using parametric tests (one-way ANOVA, t-test and Posthoc Analysis). The level of significance for acceptance or rejection of null hypotheses was at α = 0.05. The study established that cooperative mastery learning approach enhances students’ academic achievement in Physics for both genders. Further the study findings show that there was no statistical significance difference in student achievement in physics based on gender. From the findings of the study cooperative mastery learning approach is effective in improving student achievement in Physics for both boys and girls. Therefore, Physics teachers should incorporate cooperative mastery learning approach in teaching in order to reduce gender disparity in students’ achievement in Physics.