After conducting a number of pilot studies pre- and post-tests were given to three experimental classes of 11 to 13 year old early adolescents, one taken by Collings, and the two others by an inexperienced teacher. With one class the latter used materials designed to develop Field-independence only, with the other the teacher followed a similar pattern to Collings who incorporated a meta-cognitive aspect by encouraging students to analyse their own thinking strategies and to 'bridge' between the Field-independence lessons and the contexts of science. There were two control classes, and the overall period of the intervention was one school year with about 20% of the science teaching time used for the intervention. The tests used were the Group embedded Figures Test (GHFT) for Field-independence, and Volume and Heaviness (SRTII), NFER (1979) for Piagetian operations. In the pre- post-test Comparisons between experimental and Control groups all the differences between the differences were statistically significant. Collings' own class showed an effect-size of 1.53 σ on GBFT over the controls, and 0.92 σ on SRTII. The inexperienced teacher's class with Field-independence training only, showed an effect-size of 1.09 σ on GHFT and 0.36 on SRTII whereas his class with meta cognition added showed an effect-size of 1.13 σ on GEFT, and 0.63 σ on SRTII. There was no statistical difference between the 1.09 and 1.13 σ on GEFT and this inferred that the Field-independence materials were fairly robust to teacher effects. The difference between 0.36 and 0.68 σ on SRTII was significantly different, and this was interpreted as showing that the meta-cognitive aspect assisted transfer of training to Formal Operations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:380697 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Collings, John N. |
| Publisher | University of Gloucestershire |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/4589/ |
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