THE EFFECTS OF THREE DISPARATE INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACHES ON SKILL ATTEMPTS AND STUDENT LEARNING IN AN EXPERIMENTAL TEACHING UNIT
Abstract (summary)
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of three disparate teaching approaches on select product variables in a single lesson ETU. There was a comparison of the instructional approaches to determine if a significant difference existed between the approaches in relation to the number of skill attempts by each student in a randomly selected sample, the amount of student learning on the criterion skill (novel golf task), cognitive understanding of the criterion skill, and the self-rating of each student on a measure of self-efficacy.
Student subjects (N = 244) for this study were members of twelve intact classes of third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade students in two rural elementary schools. The three instructional methodologies consisted of two formal styles, the Command Approach and the Guided Discovery Approach as well as a third style, the No-Instruction Approach. Teachers of the ETU lesson were four experienced teachers trained via a micro-peer training technique in the utilization of the two formal instructional methodologies. The No-Instruction Group was supervised by the investigator, following a written format to ensure no skill related feedback. The ETU for each class was administered over a two consecutive day period, with pre-testing on one day and the twenty-minute ETU lesson and post-testing on the following day. Each teacher taught once using the Command Approach and once using the Guided Discovery Approach. Teacher fidelity to methodology, which was systematically observed, ranged from 92%-100% for the four ETU teachers.
Data analysis indicated that while significant learning did occur on the criterion skill and the cognitive measure, there were significant differences between the three instructional methodologies only on the cognitive measure. Students in the formal approaches performed significantly better on the cognitive measure than did the students in the No-Instruction Approach. While no difference was found between the treatment groups on the measure of self-efficacy, there was an expected pattern of higher rating by higher skilled students. Analysis of the skill attempt data revealed that the No-Instruction Approach students had significantly more skill practice attempts per lesson than did the students in the Command Approach and the Guided Discovery Approach.