A Comparison of the Contract Plan and the Daily-Recitation Plan of Learning for Effects in the Cognitive and Affective Domains in a High School Poetry Class

Abstract

This study was undertaken to compare the effects of daily-recitation methods of learning with the contract plan of learning for effects in the cognitive and affective domains in a high school poetry class. A nonrandomized control group pretest-posttest design was employed. The investigator developed an attitude scale to measure changes in the affective domain. The Objective Test, which consisted of identification and analysis of certain elements of poetry, and the Subjective Test, which consisted of descriptive writing, constituted the instruments to assess growth in the cognitive domain. The experiment lasted seven weeks. Analysis of variance was used to analyze all data. The results of the attitude scale showed that after seven weeks there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in attitudes toward poetry and creative writing. On the Objective Test, both groups made significant increases in learning, and there were no significant differences between the two groups. There was a trend which favored the contract group in gains made on the Objective Test. This trend was not statistically significant. On the subjective Test, there was a significant difference between the two groups. The control group made more gains in the use of imagery than did the contract group. There was a strong probability that this difference could be attributed to the difference in treatments. But this difference was not statistically significant at the .05 level. In this study, the contract plan was equal to the daily-recitation plan in affecting growth in attitudes and knowledge in a high school poetry class.