| Summary: | A thesis submitted to the faculty of education.
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
in fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Johannesburg 1984 === The experimental training study was aimed at inducing combinatorial
reasoning in adolescents. The training was Piagetian in nature but functioned
simultaneously as an operationally def'ined Ausubelian advance organizer for novel
learning material in chemistry.
The sample consisted of 161 pupils from an English-speaking co-educalional
high school in Johannesburg.
The study employed a pretest-posttest control group
design. The pretest consisted of Piaget's first chemical experiment. A technical
procedure for trouble-free administration of this task is described. A detailed
analysis of the structure of the task is also presented.
Training presented the conceptual framework, embodying, inter alia, a
systematic approach, and three analogous problems. Pupils were trained individually.
Criterion tasks consisted of the pretest in disguised form and a combinatorial problem
involving switches which controlled an electric train set. The experimental group
obtained significantly higher scores than the control group on both tasks. Prior to
training, observed developmental levels of the experimental group were 24% concrete. 41% transitional, 24% early formal and 11% late formal. After training,
these levels had improved to 1% concrete, 14% transitional, 80% early formal and
5% late formal. Training was detrimental to most late formal subjects.
Specific transfer was satisfactory since criterion tasks differed from the
training task. A delayed test on the train evaluation task, three weeks after
reinforcement of training, showed no significant difference from the immediate test.
The intrinsic effects of age, IQ and sex on the criterion tasks were not
usually significant but older subjects of higher IQ tended to achieve better. However,
higher IQ Standard Nine boys derived less benefit from training than other subjects.
Pupils received instruction on rates of chemical reactions. The experimental
subjects performed significantly better in generating the subsumer consisting of the
concept underlying the topic. They also tended to achieve better on the recall of
factual knowledge pertaining to this topic, reaching significance for Standard Nine
boys. Older subjects of higher IQ tended to obtain higher scores but not significantly
so for the sample in general. IQ, rather than training, contributed to performance on
issues requiring insight into the subject-matter.
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