JONAED

Secondary school students’ poor performance in Biology has been blamed on large classes, difficult concepts and teachers’ presentational competencies. This study which adopted a quasi-experimental, non-randomized, pretest, post-test design sought to find out the extent to which the jigsaw learning teams and teacher-led discussion teaching strategies would enhance students’ performance in Ecology. Using the multi-stage random sampling technique, eighty senior secondary I students belonging to two intact classes in a public secondary school in Ikwuano local Government Area in Abia State were used for the study. A twenty-item Ecology Attainment Test with a Kuder-Richardson reliability co-efficient of 0.78 was the data collection instrument for the study. Although the students taught Ecology using Jigsaw learning team instructional strategy showed greater improvement in their performance in the Ecology Attainment test than those taught using the Teacher-led discussion instructional strategy, this improvement was not significantly different. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that Biology teachers: vary their instructional strategies in order to provide students with bounteous opportunities to take responsibility for their own learning; adopt interactive and collaborative teaching strategies so as to create settings in which learners would become teachers who explain concepts and procedures to one another; as well as improve students’ performance in Biology.