The Relationship between Teaching Methods and Course Objectives in Educational Psychology

Abstract

THE RESEARCH literature evaluating various I methods of classroom teaching at the college level, reveals a diversity of conflicting and ambiguous results, as indicated by Hurst (5) and Stovall (9). Much of the ambiguity in previous research can be accounted for by the failure to control adequately one or more of the following aspects of the prob lem: a) specification of the goals of the course; b) differences in students' ability, achievement and pre-course status on the specific goals of the course; c) differences in subject content, and time spent in class, from method to method; d) the ef fect of the instructor; e) methods of evaluating change; and f) motivation. In the majority of studies only one measure of outcome has been used and this has generally been an index of the amount of factual material required. It has been recognized for many years that the mastery of factual material is not the only goal to be sought in teaching educational psychology to prospective teachers (8a). Three major goals are usually cited for this type of professional prepara tory course: a) the development of specific atti tudes, b) the application of knowledge to the pro fessional setting, and c) the mastery of a body of factual information. Several studies have clearly indicated that these goals are quite independent. Thus, a student's status on each of them cannot be represented collectively by a single numerical in dex (6). The purpose of this study was to compare the relative efficiency of three methods of teaching elementary educational psychology in leading to student change on four indices of the course's ob jectives. I METHOD