Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Availability

Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Industrial arts -- Study and teaching (Secondary); Manufacturing processes -- Study and teaching;

Abstract

Although educators recognize the need for educational experiences that provide students with a basic understanding of the industrial technologies, too often students are not receiving the "hands-on" experiences related to industry. Numerous curriculum programs have been developed to provide the teacher with the necessary instructional materials and also provide students with educational-occupational guidance for the world of work. Yet, many of these programs are not being utilized by industrial arts educators.

Research has shown that most manufacturing curricula range from one to two semesters in length. In order for the teacher to wholly adopt one of these programs, considerable organizational and preparational work is required. Many teachers fail to take on this challenge. With this in mind, how would teachers and students react to a one-week introductory program that would be completely self contained with hands-on experiences related to manufacturing concepts and terminology? The search for an answer to this question was the primary concern of this study.

To investigate this problem, on instructional program entitled "The Enterprise System" was developed and the cooperation of a junior high school instructor was solicited. Two intact junior high school classes were randomly assigned. One group received the instructional unit and the other group served as a control group which received their traditional unit of instruction.

A quasi-experimental design was employed to determine the effect of the independent variable (method of instruction) on the dependent variable (achievement of manufacturing concepts and terminology). The subjects were measured by a posttest employing multiple choice questions. Test items were developed in relation to selected behavioral objectives. The data collected during the experimental study was subjected to the t-test to compare the means for statistical significance. The t-value and significant level of .05 provided the index for accepting or rejecting the hypothesis.

An attitude questionnaire was also developed to provide feedback from the students in the experimental group. It was not designed to draw any comparisons between the experimental group and the control group. The questionnaire was merely designed to see if the experimental group did have a positive attitude towards this method of instruction.

The primary conclusion reached was that the experimental group showed significantly higher achievement of manufacturing concepts and terminology than the control group. Secondly, the experimental group exhibited a generally positive attitude toward the manufacturing unit of study.

Year of Submission

1977

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Industrial Technology

First Advisor

Douglas T. Pine, Chair

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

1977

Object Description

1 PDF file (110 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Share

COinS