Middle School represents a period of transition for the
students. This transition is present not only in physical change,
intellectual change, and emotional change, but also in terms of
the type of reading instruction these students receive. One
approach to reading instruction moves from a direct approach
focusing on specific skills, to a functional approach of how to
apply those skills in the content area classroom. The latter
approach is process oriented, and focuses on learning the
content by reading and participating in relevant learning
activities.
The focus of this study was to examine the interaction which
takes place among textbooks, instructors, and students in the
area of Social Studies within selected middle schools. Three
phases were involved in this study.
Phase one: Grade six Social Studies textbooks were evaluated
using the Singer Reading Inventory, which evaluates the areas of
organization, explication, conceptual density, metadiscourse,
and instructional devices within a given textbook.
Phase two: Visitations to five middle school Social Studies
classrooms were conducted over an eight week period in an
effort to determine the types of instructional strategies
employed by teachers.
Phase three: Academic achievement was measured by
publisher provided examinations, teacher prepared
examinations, or an aggregate of daily scores.
Hypothesis one: Social Studies textbooks which are more
considerate will result in greater student achievement. This
hypothesis was rejected. The achievement of students was
inversely related to the results of the evaluation of the textbooks
as determined by the Singer Reading Inventory. The rejection
of this hypothesis must be qualified in terms of the content the
subareas of the Singer Reading Inventory measured, and the type
of information the student had to acquire in order to perform
well academically.
Hypothesis two: Teachers who employ more strategies which
are of a functional process approach will enhance student
achievement in the content areas. This hypothesis was retained.
The preceeding findings may be partially explained by
considering the possibility that some classroom instructors
compensate for the inadequacies of textbooks by providing more
effective strategies and activities which enhance the interaction
of information exchange within the classroom. / Graduation date: 1990
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/38193 |
| Date | 08 June 1989 |
| Creators | Hookstra, Glenn Maitland |
| Contributors | Strowbridge, Edwin E. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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