This study examined student attitude toward mathematics and the use of positive instances or negative instances in learning 15 standard concepts of college algebra. Specifically, the study sought to find answers to: What differences appear among students taught only with positive instances compared with students receiving negative instances, as well? Do these treatments affect the students' attitude toward mathematics? In what way? / The study was conducted during the fall quarter of 1979. All subjects were freshmen at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida. The 71 students involved in the study were assigned to their particular treatment group by chance of registration. Group I received both positive and negative instances of the 15 concepts taught. The students in Group II, however, received only positive instances of the same 15 concepts. All students took a pretest and a posttest over the standard algebraic concepts involved in this study. This test had been developed in another research project and validity and reliability has been established. The same subjects were pretested and posttested on attitude. A one-way analysis of variance was used to test the null-hypotheses at the .05 level of significance. This statistical analysis was used for both the concept investigation and the attitudinal study. / This study indicated that for the concepts studied, students receiving both positive and negative instances (Group I) did significantly better than those (Group II) receiving only positive instances. The total number of instances received by both groups was identical. / Surprisingly, Group II had much higher scores on the pretreatment attitudinal opinionaire than Group I. This difference was surprising because of the very similar pretest concept scores for these two groups. However, at the end of the study the attitude scores for both groups were found to be virtually the same. Interestingly, the attitude toward mathematics for both groups improved. Group I had a significant improvement of attitude, but Group II did not. / This study suggests that providing students with both positive and negative instances may enhance their grasp of an algebraic concept. It also provided evidence that attitude improvement may result from exposure to a combination of both types of instances. This evidence may serve to promote additional investigation in this area. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-11, Section: A, page: 4630. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74342 |
| Contributors | COOK, WILLIE CLANCE., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 132 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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