Date of Award:

8-2011

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Master of Education (MEd)

Department:

School of Teacher Education and Leadership

Department name when degree awarded

Educational Leadership and Curriculum

Committee Chair(s)

Cindy D. Jones

Committee

Cindy D. Jones

Committee

Michael Freeman

Committee

Kay Camperell

Committee

Kay Bradford

Committee

Jim Dorward

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of instruction that included graphic organizers on LDS seminary students’ ability to understand scriptural text and their ability to identify doctrines in scriptural text, utilizing a repeated measures, quasi-experimental design involving 209 ninth-grade student participants. The participants were randomly assigned by class to one of two treatment groups. Participants in the treatment group received instruction using graphic organizers with the standard curriculum and participants in the comparison group received instruction using only the standard curriculum. Three different measures were employed to measure the effectiveness of the graphic organizers intervention: (a) a multiple-choice test of LDS doctrines and principles; (b) an identifying doctrines and principles in text test; and (c) a student perception survey. Results of the ANOVA for the multiple-choice test indicated no significant difference between instructional groups for ability to recall facts from the class instruction and the class text, F (1, 205) = 1.60, p = .21, partial ή² = .21. Results of the ANOVA for the identifying doctrines and principles in text test, measuring transferability of the skills learned while studying the Doctrine and Covenants to a different text containing some of the same doctrines and principles, also indicated no significant difference between groups, F (1, 196) = 1.93, p = .17. The results for the student perception survey were positive; most students felt confident about their ability to comprehend scriptural text, but were slightly less confident about their ability to identify doctrines and principles in the text. The participants in this study were generally positive in their willingness to learn about and use graphic organizers. Results of this study indicated that graphic organizers did not significantly impact students’ ability to identify doctrines and principles in scriptural text or to learn concepts from scriptural text.

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6833f52a40e0b54086f4c49529afbe36

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This work made publicly available electronically on September 2, 2011.

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