Effect of brainstorming instructional strategy on reflective thinking skills among pre-service teachers of university in ilorin metropolis

Abstract

Brainstorming has been one of the cooperative instructional interventions in facilitating teaching and learning process for its effectiveness in developing students' thinking ability within the group. This study examined the effect of brainstorming instructional strategy on reflective thinking skills among pre-service teachers of university in Ilorin metropolis. The participants were purposively selected 100-400 level students who fall within the lower benchmark score on the reflective thinking skills scale. In this quasi-experimental research, a pre-test, post-test without control group design was adopted. Reflective Thinking Skills Scale by Demir (2015) was adopted to be utilized as an instrument to collect data in this study. After the pre-test activity, the selected participants were exposed to treatment (using brainstorming strategy) on a subject topic “Intergroup-relations: economic activities, intermarriages and bilingualism”. Consequently, a post-test exercise was carried out among the participants and the data collected were subjected to paired and independent sample t-test. The findings showed that brainstorming instructional strategy has effect on reflective thinking of pre-service teachers of University in Ilorin metropolis. Therefore, it was recommended that brainstorming instructional strategy should be used by teachers to encourage and elicit in-depth thinking among pre-service teachers or students for innovative teaching and educational development at all levels.