A study of the interactions between figural and semantic aptitudes and the number of examples used to teach selected earth science concepts

Abstract

The goals of this study were twofold. First, attempts were made to identify the main effects of using different modalities of representation and different numbers of examples on concept learning. Second, the study attempted to identify and describe any aptitude-treatment interactions between the figural and semantic aptitudes and the number of examples used to teach selected earth science concepts. The research questions were both formed from and based on earlier work in concept learning, individual differences, aptitude-treatment interactions, and media attributes. Randomly selected eighth grade students from three junior high schools in Texas, chosen because they were considered to be in rural, suburban, and urban population areas, participated in the study. At each of the schools, the study was conducted in single 60 to 75 minute periods on two consecutive days. On the fir s t day, the Verbal Reasoning and Space Relations subscales of the Differential Aptitude Test, Form T, were administered to all subjects. On the second day, subjects were administered one of four randomly assigned treatments and a posttest. In these four treatment versions, subjects completed a figuralfour-example lesson booklet, a figural-eight-example lesson booklet, a semantic-four-example lesson booklet, or a semantic-eight-example lesson booklet. Careful consideration was given to the selection and application of resource attributes during the development of the lesson booklets. The data for the figural and semantic portions as well as the total posttest were analyzed by school, using multiple regression. With respect to the research questions of main effects, three significant findings were noted. For the rural subjects, the figural posttest means for the figural and semantic treatment groups were 52.66 and 47.35, representing a difference significant at the .01 level. For the suburban subjects, the figural posttest means for the figural and semantic treatment groups were 53.28 and 46.89, representing a difference significant at the .01 level...