Effect of cooperative learning strategies on students' understanding of concepts in electrochemistry

The present study was conducted to investigate the degree of effectiveness of cooperative learning instruction over a traditional approach on 11th grade students' understanding of electrochemistry. The study involved forty-one 11th grade students from two science classes with the same teacher. To determine students' misconceptions concerning electrochemistry, the Electrochemistry Concept Test consisting of 8 open-ended and 12 multiple-choice questions was used as a pre-test and some students were interviewed. According to the results, twenty-four misconceptions (six of them initially identified) about electrochemistry were identified. The classrooms were randomly assigned to a control group (traditional instruction, 21 students) and an experimental group (cooperative learning based on a constructivist approach, 20 students). After instruction, the same test was administered to both groups as a post-test. The results from the t-test indicated that the students who were trained using cooperative learning instruction had significantly higher scores in terms of achievement than those taught by the traditional approach. According to the post-test and interviews, it was also found that instruction for the cooperative group was more successful in remediation of the predetermined misconceptions. © 2006 National Science Council.