THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE PROCESS INSTRUCTION ON THE ACHIEVEMENT, ATTITUDES AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF FRESHMAN BIOLOGY STUDENTS
Abstract
Teachers designing an instructional strategy should concern themselves not only with providing materials that increase achievement and develop positive attitudes toward the subject area, but also with providing experiences that promote the cognitive developmental levels of their students. These objectives were the primary concerns of this research. A secondary purpose was to determine the relationship between biology achievement and performance levels of freshman biology students on five Piagetian tasks. The subjects for the study were students enrolled in a required biology course at Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga, Philippines during the academic year 1979-1980. Freshmen students were randomly assigned to one of ten biology sections upon enrollment. From this population, two sections were randomly selected and clinically interviewed by the researcher using five Piagetian tasks. Cognitive levels were determined based upon the student's performance on each of the tasks. Previous knowledge in biology was assessed by a pretest, developed by the University of the Philippines Science Education Center. The subjects in the two sections were equivalent in terms of their knowledge in biology content and their cognitive level. Treatment was randomly assigned to the two sections. One treatment was a new form of instruction, the cognitive process approach; the second treatment involved a traitional format, the lecture-laboratory approach. A randomized posttest only, control group design was used to test the effects of cognitive process instruction on biology achievement and student attitudes; and a randomized pretest-posttest, control group design was used to test the development of cognitive levels. Two separate comprehensive posttests measured biology achievement and a biology attitude instrument measured attitudes toward biology and biology instruction. Five Piagetian tasks (conservation of weight; conservation of volume using clay; conservation of volume using metal cylinders; separation of variables in the bending rods; equilibrium in the balance beam) measured cognitive levels. The treatment period was for one semester (16 weeks) and both treatment groups were taught by the researcher. The study was replicated with a different group of freshmen students during the second semester. For both semesters the t-statistic was used to test the hypotheses of no significant difference in scores obtained in biology achievement, in student attitudes, and in cognitive level between the two treatment groups. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the relationship between biology achievement and performance on the Piagetian tasks. Other descriptive statistics and a two-way ANOVA were computed to provide an overview of the data gathered. The major conclusions of the study were the following. (1)The biology achievements and attitudes of students increased significantly during one semester after exposure to cognitive process instruction. The increase in achievement was attributed to the instructional method, while the development of positive attitudes was attributed to the interaction of the teaching method, instructor, and the students. (2)A significant correlation was found between Piagetian posttest task scores and biology comprehensive examination scores. (3)When correlations between Piagetian posttest task scores and biology comprehensive examination scores were calculated, there was no difference in the values of those correlations for the experimental and control groups. (4)When pretest and posttest scores on five Piagetian tasks were compared, there was no significant difference in the mean gain of concrete students in the experimental group and concrete students in the control group.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Curricula|Teaching
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