Purpose, Hypothesis, Variables, Prior Research
"Effects of a Children's Book and a Traditional Textbook on Fifth-grade Students' Achievement and Attitudes Toward Social Studies" by McKinney and Jones (1993). The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of instruction based on a children's trade book, the regular textbook, or use of the regular textbook and reading the children's book at home on student knowledge acquisition and attitudes toward social studies and the textbook. The six hypotheses were that: (1) "the students taught with a children's book or a combination . . . would score significantly higher on an achievement test . . . than students taught with a regular textbook;" (2) "the groups taught with the children's book would score significantly higher on a subtest of items . . . from the children's book only than the students . . . regular textbook only," (3) "students taught with a children's book would have a more positive attitude . . . than students taught with a regular textbook . . .," (4) "two groups taught with a children's book would have more positive attitudes toward social studies than the students taught with the regular textbook," (5) "students taught with the children's book would have ranked social studies more positively . . . textbook," and (6) "students in the two groups taught with the children's book would prefer reading the children's book . . ." (p. 57.).
The justification for the study was that students tend to dislike social studies, finding it boring and irrelevant and reasons for these poor attitudes must be understood. Previous studies showed that these reasons might be the textbooks used since they include condensed information. It has also been suggested that children's books may offer an alternative to traditional textbooks. Empirical support for this claim was needed since previous studies have found conflicting results. The authors provided a bri
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