Comparisons of teaching for understanding methodology vs. traditional Latter-day Saints Church Educational System teaching methodology on cognition, understanding, belief, and application outcomes of high-school students attending daily LDS early morning seminary classes.

摘要

The problem. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of two different teaching methods, Project Zero's "Teaching for Understanding" (TfU) versus traditional Latter-day Saints Church Educational System (CES) methods, on the cognitive and behavioral outcomes of high-school students in Latter-day Saint daily religious classes.; Method. One-hundred-six early-morning seminary religion classes in the San Diego area were divided into two groups, experimental and control. A self-developed paper and pencil pretest/posttest was utilized to collect data from high-school students attending early morning seminary classes. The 25 question pretest/posttest was designed to measure student achievement in acquisition of knowledge, understanding, rate of belief, and rate of application. The number of pretest and posttest for both groups totaled 2,178: 557 experimental group pretests, 547 control group pretests, 545 experimental group posttests, and 529 control group posttests.; Results. The study revealed that students taught using the TfU instructional method responded to factual cognitive questions at a significantly higher level (p .05) than their peers taught using the traditional CES teaching methods. The study disclosed that students receiving the TfU instructional method responded to cognitive understanding questions at a significantly higher level (p .05) than their peers taught using the traditional CES teaching methods. The study divulged that students educated using the traditional CES teachings methods responded at a significantly higher level (p .05) in rating agreement of stated religious beliefs in comparison to their peers educated through TfU methods. The study also found that students receiving traditional CES instruction rated their level of application of religious principles at a significantly higher level (p .05) than those students receiving TfU treatment. However, both the experimental group and the traditional group rated their level of application significantly lower on the posttest than on the pretest.