An experimental study on the teaching method as a determinant of the school-achievement

Abstract

In order to study how much important the teaching method is as a determinant of the school achievement, we tried the following experiment. Subj. … two nearly homogeneous classes (A and B) in the 4th grade of the elementary school Subject matter … Social Studies. Method … the matched-group method (a) the question-answer centered method to the A class (b) the group-learning centered method to the B class The findings were as follows: (1) From the view-point of the school-achievement, the difference between A and B was very small, but when we divided the evaluative contents into the information, the skill and the attitude, the B class become better and better in the skill and the attitude, as the testings proceeded. The differences in the ways of motivating and thinking and so on in both methods produced such a difference, we think. (2) Those two teaching methods gave not only the qualitative differences to the school-achievement in the narrow sense, but also some modification to the pupils' whole personality. That is, in the B the active and cooperative tendency was promoted and in the A the passive and egoistic. (3) The deviation of the school-achievement was lagrer in the B class than in the A, because in the B class it was easier to be psychological non-participants. (4) By the contents of the subject matter, too, the effect of the both methods differs, we think. © 1963, The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. All rights reserved.