Peer learning: An alternative teaching model for Garissa county public secondary schools

Abstract

To pass knowledge from one generation to another requires proven method that stands the test of time. Teachers struggle to ensure their students grasp facts and concepts of a topic at hand in real time. The methodology of teaching influences the learning process. Like professional story-teller, a teacher must make his/her students see the mental pictures of the story. He/ she must leave more questions than answers in the heads of his/her students for contemplation. This study investigates whether students can learn better from colleagues (peers) than from their professional teachers. Performance outcomes of Garissa County public secondary school students in Mathematics was studied using peer learning and other conventional teaching methodologies as treatments. Based on the gender of their students, schools were grouped into boys-only, girls-only and mixed-sex. Using simple random sampling technique Form Two students in all the single-sexed schools were divided into Control and Experimental groups. All the Mixed-sex schools were treated as a stratum. Post-test Mathematics scores were collected from all the three groups. The Control groups were taught using the conventional methodologies while the Experimental group from single-sex schools and those from the Mixed-sex schools that were being studied for effects of interaction were taught by peer learning methodology, all under double-blinded setup. Pretest Mathematics scores were collected from the groups. They were letter-graded A to E and entered in Microsoft Excel Software. The number of students who obtained C+ and above, the cut off point for university admission in Kenya was summarized. Statistics such pretest and posttest Means, SDs and CV as well as Pearson’ Correlation of the Experimental and the Control groups were calculated using R Statistical Software. Paired and unpaired t-test was also calculated. Using Chi-squared test, the influence of peer learning on the exposed groups was tested for significance at 5% confidence level while the confounding factors such as gender of students, text book student ratio, and teacher student ratio were also calculated at the same confidence level. The study found out that there were significant differences between the Means of the Control and the Experiment groups. There were significant differences between the Mean scores of boys’ and those of girls’ schools. The Mixed-sex schools showed significant effects of interaction. There was high coefficient of variations within scores of the same term than between the two terms. The confounding effects were found to be significant on their own and on peer learning. The findings suggested that peer learning was a superior teaching methodology compared to the conventional ones for Garissa County public secondary schools.