Effects of Cooperative Thinking Skills Training Intervention on Academic Performance of Primary School Pupils in Nakuru West Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Academic performance has remained elusive as different cohorts of learners perform differently in national examinations. Previous studies on academic performance of pupils have explored the question mostly from environmental perspectives rather than pupil’s intrinsic factors such as reading difficulties and successes of respective intervention measures. Interventions on reading difficulties being experienced by learners have been sought, however, the persistence of the problem leads to questions over the efficacy of the interventions. This study was set out to find out the effects of cooperative thinking skills training intervention on academic performance of public primary school pupils in Nakuru West Sub-County, Kenya. Descriptive survey research design was used targeting 12 public primary schools from which 342 language teachers and 1133 pupils were theorized to have reading difficulties were sampled. A sample size of 160 respondents was selected using both purposive and stratified random sampling for teachers and pupils respectively. Data was collected using a well-structured questionnaire and an observation schedule which were analyzed with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21.0. Descriptive statistics involving frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, and inferential statistical methods involving linear regression were used to analyze data. The results from the observation schedule were analyzed using content analysis and integrated during interpretations, discussions and conclusions. The study found that cooperative thinking skills training intervention had a positive and strong effect on academic performance of pupils with reading difficulties among public primary school pupils in Nakuru West Sub-County. Hence, the study concluded that cooperative thinking skills training intervention as currently applied in teaching was a very promising intervention in remedying reading difficulties. The study recommended that teachers should find out and introduce new ways of cooperative learning specifically those which encourage the learners to assist each other improve their reading proficiency .