The study of the effects of expository skills teaching methodologies on urban student achievement at the secondary-level
Roberts, Jerome
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/19783
Description
Title
The study of the effects of expository skills teaching methodologies on urban student achievement at the secondary-level
Author(s)
Roberts, Jerome
Issue Date
1992
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Ward, James G.
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ed.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Secondary
Education, Curriculum and Instruction
Language
eng
Abstract
This study concerns itself with the teaching of expository text. Expository text refers to subjects like history, science, or literature where knowledge cannot be sequenced from least to most difficult. An experiment was derived to test the hypothesis that students who were in classes of teachers trained in an expository teaching methodology would have a higher mean score on a content-related test than students in classes of nontrained teachers.
The experiment was conducted at a large urban high school. Teachers who taught U.S. history volunteered to participate in the study, and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Experimental teachers were given an instructional manual and participated in a one-hour training session with the researcher, while control subjects received no training.
All students were given a 15-item pretest to assess prior knowledge. The instructional unit was then taught by experimental and control teachers, and a 30-item posttest was given to all students. Two weeks after the posttest, a 10-item maintenance test was given to measure long-term treatment effects.
Questions were classified into two types: factual, which can be answered by looking at a single sentence in the text, and integrative, which require students to look at several passages to answer. Student scores were then divided into three ranges: upper, middle, and lower third. A statistical examination of the data showed significantly higher mean scores in only one area: on factual questions for experimental students who were classified as scoring in the lower third on both the post- and maintenance test.
Practice implications indicate that the expository teaching methods would be very useful with high school students in content classes who are classified as having lower abilities. The methodology provides a high structure for students who may not possess this cognitive ability naturally. This high structure causes students to retain factual information at a higher level than students who did not have the benefit of teachers trained in expository teaching methodologies. This factual information was also retained longer by the experimental students as measured by their mean scores on the 10-day maintenance test.
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