Chapter VI: The Improvement of Instruction

Abstract

J. His IS a golden age for research on improvement of college instruction. With financial support available from the Fund for the Advancement of Education, the U.S. Office of Education, and other sources, with increasing willingness of college administrators and (at least some) faculties to experiment with teaching procedures, and with new research instruments, the amount of research in progress is greater than ever before. Discussion MethodsOne of the healthy trends has been to recognize that "discussion" is not a single method, but several methods. Several experiments compared different styles of discussion, with particular emphasis on student-centered or "democratic" methods. Birney and McKeachie (3) listed some of the 351 at University of Birmingham on June 11, 2015 http://rer.aera.net Downloaded from REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Vol. XXX, No. 4dimensions commonly involved in comparisons of democratic and nondemocratic discussions.Following the model of Lewin, Lippitt, and White's study of authoritarian, democratic, and laissez faire group climates, the University of Michigan's general psychology staff (16) compared three styles of teaching: recitation, discussion, and group-tutorial. The autocratic recitation method produced superior performance on the final examination, and also produced greater interest in psychology, as measured by the election of advanced courses in psychology. Students preferred it to the other methods. In a freshman orientation course Burke (4) found performance of students in conventional classes numbering 125 superior to that of students in co-operative groups of four to seven. Moreover, this difference generalized to other courses. Lyle (25) found performance of students in a conventional class superior to that of students taught by a problem-oriented method. Smith (40) and Krumboltz and Farquhar (22), however, studying methods which varied in degree of directiveness, found no differences in their effects upon student learning and ability to make "applicational transfer" of learning.Determination of the best basis for grading is a special problem for the teacher using student-centered instruction. Haines (17) found no significant achievement advantages for students working co-operatively versus those working competitively for grades, but did find a marked difference in morale which favored the co-operative groups. Smith (42), however, comparing a lecture class to a "teamwork" class in which group incentives were used, did not find differences in satisfaction comparable to those of Haines.Patton (35) observed results in two classes in which there were no examinations, no lectures, and no assigned readings. Students decided on reading to do, class procedure to use, written work to perform, and method of grading. In comparison with a control group, these students (a) believed the course more valuable, (b) showed greater interest in psychology, and (c) gave more dynamic and motivational analyses of a behavior problem. Obtaining individual measures of acceptance of responsibility in th...