Effects of Course Content and Teacher Sex on the Social Climate of Learning

Abstract

Educators often claim that the quality of an educational experience is less closely related to the content of the subject matter learned than to the method or process of learning. Indeed, some contemporary theorists (Bruner, 1960; Schwab, 1962) and the so-called affective educators of the late 1960's (Leonard, 1968) appear to stress a student-centered discovery process of learning to the exclusion of content. Yet, despite these pleas for inquiry in all school learning, certain types of course content seem more easily adapted to such experiential methods than do others. Many of the new science and mathematics courses seem particularly relevant to disciples of student-centered instruction (see Smith; Robinson; Romberg; Kieren; and Kilpatrick, in RER, 1969). The dearth of studies in curriculum evaluation, however, have generally neglected the actual effects of courses on pupils' perceptions of their learning environment (Grobman, 1968; Welch, 1969). That pupils are sensitive to such differences has been demonstrated by Yamamoto, Thomas, and Karns (1969) for different secondary school courses and by Anderson, Walberg and