Students Groupings

A. INTRODUCTION / BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY The Department of Education decided that there will be no academic freeze in the Philippines for the school year 2020-2021. DEPED Secretary Briones even stated that "Education must continue even in times of crisis whether it may be a calamity, disaster, emergency, quarantine, or even war. We appreciate the efforts of the Information and Communications Technology Service and Undersecretary Pascua for making this platform available in these trying times" (DepEd, 2020). In time with the opening of classes, the department focused on finding ways on how to deliver quality education and came up with different modalities to cater the 22 million Filipino youth (DepEd, 2020). Online distance learning is one of the modality offered to the students who have access to the internet. The online teachers are equipped with knowledge and skills on how to properly carry out their lessons in this type of modality but are facing different problems such as allowing the students to interact with each other and participate in group activities. The researchers are Master of Arts students majoring in science at the National Teachers College. The researchers wanted to increase the academic performance of the students through the use of collaborative approach in an online class.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of homogeneous versus heterogeneous reading-style grouping on EFL students' non-preferred reading style and reading comprehension. The study used a pretest-posttest experimental design. The original subjects of the study (N=86) were Egyptian English major senior students during the 2005/2006 academic year. At the beginning of this academic year, the Analytic/Global Reading Styles Inventory (AGRSI) was administered to these subjects to measure each student's analytic and global reading styles. Based on their scores on the inventory, strongly analytic and strongly global subjects (N=62) were randomly assigned to homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. Afterwards, both groups were tested to measure each student's reading comprehension before treatment using the Reading Comprehension Test developed by the researcher. Each group was then randomly assigned to pairs. During treatment, the members of each pair alternatively exhibited their reading behaviors by thinking aloud while reading and sharing answers to post-passage questions after reading. The study lasted for 28 weeks, one ninety-minute session per week. After treatment, the AGRSI and the Reading Comprehension Test were re-administered to both groups to measure each student's non-preferred reading style and reading comprehension. The differences in the pre-to-posttest improvement between the two groups were then analyzed for significance using ANCOVA. The results indicated that the heterogeneous group students demonstrated significantly greater pre to- posttest improvement in both their non-preferred reading style and reading comprehension than the homogeneous group students [f (1, 59)=60.33, p less than 0.001; f (1, 59)=43.18, p less than 0.001, respectively]. Based on these findings, the researcher concludes that the non-preferred reading style can be developed when students learn with and from others with different reading styles and that reading comprehension is neither a bottom-up nor a top-down process but an interaction between the two. Therefore, it demands the development and integration of both the left and right hemisphere functions of the brain. The study concludes with suggestions for further research.

Keywords: Reading Comprehension; Cognitive Style; Brain Hemisphere; Reading Comprehension; Cognitive Style; Brain Hemisphere

This study aimed to explore the effect of Kagan cooperative learning structures in enhancing the learning achievement of the Bhutanese students in learning chemistry. This was experimental research, pre-testpost-test control group design. A total of 76 higher secondary students from Daga Central School participated in this research. Samples were obtained through purposive sampling. The participants were divided into two groups namely, control group (n = 38) and experimental group (n = 38). The Experimental group was taught using Kagan cooperative learning structures whereas control group was taught using conventional method (lecture method) for four weeks. Achievement test were administered before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed by computing means, standard deviations and t-test. The results of the study showed statistically significant difference in achievement between groups taught using Kagan cooperative learning structures and those taught via conventional method with moderate effect size (d = 0.63), suggesting Kagan cooperative learning structures as effective pedagogical approach in learning chemistry in Bhutanese higher secondary schools.