The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of locus of control and field-dependence-independence of hearing-impaired Freshman college learners on achievement while learning rule using skills in either a discovery or an expository instructional method. An aptitude treatment interaction was hypothesized in which learners who were internal in their control orientation in academic situations and/or field independent in their approach to a problem solving task would learn better by a discovery instructional method rather than by an expository instructional method. The converse was expected to be true for those learners who were external in their control orientation and/or field dependent in their approach to problem solving tasks. / Two measures of locus of control (one referred to academic situations, one referred to general expectancies of control) and one measure of field-dependence-independence were administered to 210 learners at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. The learners were grouped on the basis of their personality test scores and then randomly assigned to either the discovery or expository instructional method. The learners received instruction on rule-using tasks in metric conversion. The posttest was the dependent variable. / Regression analysis was used to analyze the data. No aptitude treatment interaction was found. Math ability, reading ability, field-dependence-independence were significant predictors of achievement. Locus of control and method were not significant main effects. Average posttest performance of field independent learners was significantly higher than that of field intermediate learners in both methods. In the expository method, the average performance of field dependent learners was significantly higher than that of field intermediate learners. / No relationship was found between the two locus of control scales, or between each of the locus of control scales and the Group Embedded Figures Test. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-10, Section: A, page: 3206. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74952 |
| Contributors | MAHER, HENRY PAUL., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 372 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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