Effect of Cooperative Mastery Learning Approach on Secondary School Students’ Self concept 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 improve Physics performance in secondary schools. However, and despite these efforts, the desired outputs have not been realized. The fundamental challenge facing the teaching of physics is how to enhance students’ self concept in physics which is an important aspect of academic performance in science learning. While cooperative mastery learning approach has been shown to improve self concept in other science subjects’ studies addressing the effect of cooperative mastery learning approach towards student’s self concept in Physics are inadequate. Hence this study investigated the effects of Cooperative Mastery Learning Approach on secondary school students’ self concept in Physics in Kirinyaga County. Solomon’s four quasi experimental group design was used. A sample of 180 respondents was obtained from an accessible population of 5850. 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 a students’ self concept questionnaire (SSCQ). The Reliability was tested by subjecting the instrument to a pilot study in a school in Embu County. Reliability coefficient for students’ self concept questionnaire was 0.795. 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 non parametric tests (Kruskak- Wallis test, Mann Whitney U 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’ motivation in Physics. Further the study findings show that there was statistical significance in student self concept between students taught using cooperative mastery learning approach and those taught using conventional teaching approach. From the findings of the study cooperative mastery learning approach is effective in improving student self concept in Physics. Therefore, Physics teachers should incorporate the cooperative mastery learning approach in teaching in order to improve students’ self concept in Physics.